


A Nest in Flight

by coffeegleek



Series: Empty Nest Verse [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst with a Happy Ending, Flashbacks, Homeless Kurt Hummel, Homelessness, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Political Allegory, Racism, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicidal Thoughts, not Ryerson friendly, not your typical hybrid fic, scenes with additional canon characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27973153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeegleek/pseuds/coffeegleek
Summary: Between A Nest of Scars & Empty Nest-Revised there was Kurt, newly escaped from juvie & all alone in the world.
Series: Empty Nest Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/863204
Kudos: 7





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read on its own as a singular fic, before reading Empty Nest-Revised, or after reading Empty Nest-Revised and straight through to Burt’s Nest as there are references to all of those fics within it. 
> 
> Please heed the tags. Not as graphic as A Nest of Scars, but it has its moments. Lots of angst, but I swear there’s some happiness in it too along with a happy ending. 
> 
> Starts at Kurt’s escape from the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory at age 15 and follows the year of his life on the streets of Lima until shortly before Burt discovers him sleeping under the front porch. (Early August 2016 - September 2017.)
> 
> I can’t thank enough all who have helped me with this verse along the way. You are truly appreciated. ((hugs))
> 
> Fanart by me.
> 
> Last full editing pass was completed on Jan 16, 2021  
> Tags, characters, summary, and author notes updated and fanart created in Dec 2020.

—

Kurt didn’t remember everything about his escape from the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory with Puck and Quinn. It had all gone by in a blur. A rush of adrenaline pushing him onward until he was safe because stopping meant getting caught. And getting caught meant his hell wouldn’t just never end, it would get worse. Much, much worse.

Surprisingly, it hadn’t been all that hard to escape. If he wasn’t so desperate to leave, to make all of the abuse stop, he would have laughed at Quinn’s idea. There was a lot of hastily whispered brainstorming, a lot of waiting until everything could be set into place, and too much relying upon Puck’s Nana Connie and her latest boy toy, the Reformatory’s food delivery driver. 

No matter how crazy he thought it was, drugging the guards with diarrhea-inducing coffee and pot brownies, Quinn seducing one of the guards, and then escaping by car was still the best idea the three of them could come up with. It was a plan that had been used in a lot of the bad movies and TV shows they had watched together in the common room. How no one else had tried it in the eight years he’d been locked up in the Reformatory, he didn’t know. 

Yet there it was - the perfect week of clear skies, warm weather, and only a few days before the annual Founders Day parade. The day, in fact, where all of the local businessmen and politicians who had deals with the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory would come to get their cars washed and detailed by the juvenile detention center’s captive child labor. One of the services the prison offered to the local politicians, county agencies, and Important Members of Society was a full line of auto care that ranged from mechanical repairs to detailed cleaning. Kurt had been washing cars since he was six years old. He’d been picking crops since then too, but the majority of the farmers didn’t have as much power, nor as high of a standing as the rest there that day and so hadn't been invited.

He was fifteen now. Like the majority of the other times he’d done this kind of work, the day was sweltering and he and the other inmates were down to their gray undershirts, their orange and olive green jumpsuits pulled down enough to tie the sleeves around their waists. Only this time, half the guards had called out sick with the stomach flu. The half that had come to work, the ones that hadn’t been assigned to be inside with Commandant Ryerson as he showed his very important guests around and schmoozed them with food and booze, were outside, constantly running to the bathroom, and suffering from a combination of dehydration, bad weed, heat, and boredom.

It was during the peak of the heat and a few hours after the work detail began, that he, Puck, and Quinn had made their escape. Kurt was grateful that he didn’t have to hotwire a car, a skill he only knew in theory. Nor did any of them have to distract the guards with additional sexual favors. Quinn had taken care of Officer Schuester that morning and promised him more than just a couple of blowjobs for the privilege of getting to drive the cars from work station to station.

With a few subtle signals they had chosen a nondescript vehicle - an older model, four door, navy blue sedan belonging to some businessman's daughter. Kurt would have loved to have stolen what he had dubbed the Commandant's penis compensator, but the Barbie pink sports car was too noticeable and parked off to the side in its own special spot. The thirty or so other vehicles being washed that day were in the outer parking lot; only one barbed wire gated fence away from freedom. A gate that had been left open to accommodate the steady stream of cars in and out of the Reformatory’s grounds. 

As the three of them had been working as a team all day, it didn’t appear out of the ordinary for he and Puck to join Quinn at the sedan as she pulled it up. Only instead of her getting out to help them wash the car, they got in and Quinn floored it around the parked cars, tired prisoners, and gates the hot and bored guards weren’t quick enough to fully close until it was too late. 

Kurt remembered holding his breath, too scared to breathe as they sped out of the grounds and down the long road that led from the prison on the outskirts of town to the more populated areas. Sirens from the guard towers filled the air and he was terrified, trying to listen for the sounds of cop cars in-between Quinn and Puck’s bickering in the front seat. Puck wanted to change the plan, but Quinn was determined to stick to it. Kurt wholeheartedly agreed with Quinn seeing as how she was the one driving at breakneck speeds, skidding around turns so fast that dusty gravel flew behind them, and his stomach lurched in protest. After a bad turn that almost flipped them over and Quinn threatening to dump his ass out, Puck finally got the hint to shut the hell up.

They slowed down when it was safe to do so, blending in with the increased traffic of locals going about their days. Puck was familiar with Lima Heights and knew an acquaintance who had no problem accepting a stolen car in exchange for a couple hundred dollars in cash and some old clothes they could change into. He also knew the location of an abandoned warehouse they could spend a few nights in until it was safe to head to the truck stop. During the frantic drive to the chop shop, Kurt had found an old map in the backseat of the car and a handful of loose change. It wasn’t much, but the map at least would show him how to get the hell out of Lima, Ohio.

—

The warehouse was more rubble and weeds than standing walls, but it provided enough coverage and the appearance of such an improbable place to hide that they’d only heard the cops drive by the place once. Kurt didn’t ask Puck how he had managed to get a bag of cheeseburgers and fries without getting caught when he returned from one of his jaunts outside of the warehouse. He was just grateful for his share. It had been two days after escaping since they’d eaten. 

Kurt had offered to kill the nest of mice sharing the rubble with them, but Quinn and Puck both insisted it wasn’t good for her baby. Rather than disagree, Kurt had left the animals alone. Catching mice was a skill he had learned as a little kid inside the Reformatory, but not one he enjoyed practicing. Mice were gross cooked and even worse raw, but it was eat them or starve and get hit for not working fast and hard enough. This time, the only ones who would be pissed were his two bunkmates. Not wanting any trouble given that Puck had only agreed to let him come because Quinn had insisted upon it, Kurt had told his stomach that it could wait while he took his turns alternately standing guard and catching a few hours of sleep. He and hunger had been old friends since before he’d gotten locked up. A little while longer was nothing.

When the food came, Kurt muttered his thanks. He pocketed one burger for later, but ate the other and fries as fast as possible. That was another thing he’d learned at the Reformatory. If you ate too slow and didn’t hide your leftovers, someone was always ready to steal the food from you - Puck and their other former bunkmates included. Hell, himself included. 

He knew that Puck was still pissed at him for stealing his waffles his first month in juvie and needed to get the hell over it. It served the guy right. Puck was an idiot for trying to steal an ATM in the first place. His second mistake had been trying to make his own place at the top of the pecking order by picking on someone he’d thought was weaker than himself. Kurt hadn’t been at the top, but he wasn’t at the bottom either. Stepping on the guy’s tail so he couldn’t stand up from the mess hall table, taking his waffles, and eating them in front of him had proven he wasn’t weak either. 

Okay, so maybe it had been more than one time he’d growled, “Your waffles will always be mine.” But that first month? Okay, those first months and other times over the past two years, those were the days Kurt knew that he wasn’t going to be the one stripping for the guards and putting on a show in the showers just to get some food. The two had been rivals ever since.

After another restless sleep, startled awake at every sound thinking it was the cops ready to drag them back to the Reformatory or dump them early into the adult prison, they all gave up trying to rest. The two days of laying low since their escape had felt like eight and the third was dragging on just as long. They were getting thoroughly tired of each other and of doing nothing. The discussion of what to do next didn’t last long. 

When night fell, they agreed that it was safe enough to head to the truck stop. It was there they split up. Given the late hour, not many truckers were on the move, the handful there were choosing to sleep overnight in the parking lot. Puck and Quinn paid a freight driver to take them to Columbus with the promise to help the older hybrid unload his haul when they got there. 

The only ride Kurt had managed to find for himself came from an unwashed and bearded human who couldn’t stop his leering eyes from roving over his body. Licking his lips, the creep had told him that seeing as how he was such a pretty young thing he could have a ride all the way to Pittsburg as long as he was a good boy for his new daddy. Fighting the urge to either rip the guy’s dick off or throw up, his brain hadn’t decided which it wanted to do more, Kurt had run away as fast as he could and gave up on the truck stop. 

He wasn’t more than past the outskirts of the parking lot when he met a girl with a couple of tattoos peeking through patches of shaved, deep brown fur, streaks of pink standing out on her head and arms, and a handful of piercings on her face. Ronnie, as she called herself, offered him a place to squat for the night as long as he would pay for, or steal, some smokes. With a reluctance he tried to hide, Kurt forked over half of what Quinn had given him, hoping that the $20 would buy him more than a single night on the stained mattress within the old house Ronnie and the other girls who called themselves The Skanks, squatted in. Fortunately, it had. Making out with Mack earned him a few hits from a shared joint and the beanie she’d stolen from a hipster who had thought it would be enlightening to spend the summer as a truck driver in the heart of America. Given how it smelled, she probably hadn’t been lying. 

If any of them had figured out that he’d run away from juvie, they didn’t say so. More likely, they didn’t care and he was perfectly fine with that. The fewer questions the better. At least he looked like he fit in with them with his camouflage cargo pants, black T-shirt that had seen better days, and beat up Converse sneakers. Puck had “accidentally” forgotten to get him a hoodie like he had for himself and Quinn, leaving his head bare. Kissing a girl and letting her grope his ass and fondle his tail was a small price to pay for the dark grey beanie that would hide his clipped ear. Given the other choice was no hat and him continuing to be immediately identifiable by cops as an inmate. The clothing-thankfully-on make out session and hand he used to hide his flaccid dick had also allowed him to keep his other secret.

When it was time to pay up again or leave, Kurt headed out, this time along Findlay Road and down to where it turned into OH-81, hoping to make it to New York City on foot before winter came. It was a long shot, but he had to try. He’d always wanted to live there, where people didn’t care who you were or where you came from. When he got to the Route 75 overpass, he discovered there was construction that didn’t look like it was going to be finished anytime soon. 

With too much noise, too many people and cars, and not enough cover, he decided it wasn't worth the risk to try and continue on. At least not for a while. With the help of furtive glances to his outdated map, he headed into Lima proper and started looking for places he could hide out in. If the construction didn’t clear up by winter, he would need someplace he could try to make at least semi-warm. 

Kurt tried not to feel overwhelmed. He had no idea what he was doing. No idea where he was going. Aside from trips in a bus to the farms that littered Allen County where he’d been handcuffed, shackled, and forced to plant and pick crops, he hadn’t been outside of the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory since he was six years old. He had no idea how to act “normal.”

At least he was free. That was what mattered most. Everything else could be figured out. He was once again Kurt Elizabeth and refused to be turned back into Inmate One Four Three Eight Zero Five. Pushing that fear down, Kurt took a deep breath and forged onward. It was the only way to go. 


	2. Surviving in a Different Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> end of middle-August to beginning of late August 2016, 2 ½ week time period

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Physical assault and forced prostitution/dub con. 
> 
> I live on the poor side of town, right next to an even poorer side of a city, and for 20 years lived across from the local drug dealer. Everyone on my street knows what the undercover cop cars look like and everyone not white has had experience with racial profiling cops and racist neighbors. Some of Kurt’s experiences walking through Lima are taken from my own. 
> 
> Also, don’t do what Kurt does with a makeshift ACE bandage. It’s no longer considered medically sound advice, at least in the U.S. Thanks to notenoughtogivebread for that medical advice and always being a sounding board. 
> 
> Lastly, it took until creating the fanart for this fic to realize I'd been spelling 7-11 wrong. IRL, it's 7-Eleven. Given that I've written it as 7-11 throughout the entire verse, we're just going to pretend the corporation only used numbers. It's an AU after all.

—

Kurt didn’t remember much about Lima. He remembered the bakery section of the grocery store where the pale human woman had started screaming at him and his mom because he was eating a donut. He remembered the police officers who had arrested them, but not what they’d looked like except for being male, human, and having black hair and mean faces. He remembered his mom crying and saying his name over and over again. 

He thought he remembered bits of their apartment, knowing it wasn’t a house because his mom would tell him stories about how one day they’d live in one with a big yard and lots of rooms. As for where they had lived geographically, he didn’t know. Lima had too many sections, all with similar sounding names. He knew they hadn’t been even close to rich. Traversing the streets eight years later, the poorer streets looked sort of familiar, but at the same time they looked like every neighborhood he had already passed through. They were all lined with worn down houses and apartment buildings pressed up against overgrown factory and warehouse lots, mowed weed-covered yards, fences that needed mending, cracked sidewalks, kids playing outside, a blasting car stereo, and more often than not, at least one couple or pair of neighbors screaming at each other. 

Not every neighborhood was loud but the seemingly tranquil ones were less common and some of those had drug dealers or undercover cops trying to catch the deals going down. At least it was easy to spot the undercover cops. Every single unmarked car was beige. Lima must have gotten a hell of a discount on paint. Not that he was complaining. It made avoiding them that much easier. 

Kurt had thought that sticking to the predominantly impoverished, hybrid, and otherwise racially diverse neighborhoods would gain him some sympathy and protection. Hoping that everyone would be too focused on their own business to notice him or not care if they did; that he’d fit in. After all, wasn’t he just like them? Poor, a hybrid, beaten down and stomped on by the humans who felt they were the superior of the two races that had evolved on this godforsaken planet. 

Yet apparently, he’d thought wrong. The occupants of the houses and duplexes would scream at him when they caught him sleeping under their porch or a corner of the back yard; swearing that they didn’t need any trouble from the police. Yelling that if he had stolen from them or done drugs and left needles lying around for their kids to find, there wouldn’t be anything left for the cops to haul away. 

Having no choice, Kurt kept moving on, trying to stay out of sight, flinching at every siren and loud voice, thinking the police had found him at last, and unable to relax when he realized it wasn’t meant for him. 

—

It frustrated him how quickly his money ran out. Even buying the cheapest food he could find at a 7-11 near a hybrid neighborhood, too scared to enter a grocery store or McDonald’s, the $20 didn’t stretch far. No matter how carefully he rationed it took less than two weeks until he was forced to start scavenging in dumpsters and garbage cans. 

Having few other options and knowing only that Lima West had a lot of bars and not much else, Kurt made his way from the part of Lima that bordered Lima Heights Adjacent and into Lima’s business district. It wasn’t much, just a few chain stores and restaurants, but those stores had dumpsters. Dumpsters that were surely better than the one behind the 7-11 that contained more used condoms and needles than expired food.

Dumpster or residential trash can, the heat of the never-ending summer made that which was tossed almost unbearable to consume. He didn’t know why he had gotten his hopes up for bruised fruit, stale bread, and barely expired, thawed frozen dinners. Reality was closer to what he’d been forced to eat at the Reformatory with worse exceptions. More mold than not, no waffles to speak of, less soup beans and mystery meat, and less food in general. Far too many people cleaned out their recycling cans. The remnants that were left behind were hard to scrape off and it took too many to make a dent in his ever-growing hunger.

He kept moving, kept checking, kept hoping that the next dumper or trash can would provide him with enough food to get him through the next day and make the dizzy spells stop. Rats would try to bite him and mice were too quick to catch, so even his old Reformatory standbys were out of reach. A chocolate bar dropped by a stoned teenager had tasted amazing, but the gut wrenching vomiting afterwards was a firsthand lesson as to why hybrids avoided the stuff. It was his first ever Snickers bar and he hoped it would be his last. 

—

Kurt had been six years old when he’d gotten caught eating a donut he’d taken from a grocery store bakery case. Now he was fifteen and had gotten caught eating a donut from the dumpster of one. This time instead of a racist human woman and a pair of cops with handcuffs, it was a gang of humans with fists and steel-toed boots. 

He’d been badly beaten before at the Reformatory and had the scars and poorly healed bones as proof. This time it was worse. There were no guards to pull the brutes off before he could be killed, nor to drag him away to the Infirmary, his bunk, or Solitary. There was only the sound of fists and his scream as a rib that had been broken just a few months ago was broken again along with a few others. The words yelled at him were clear. The dumpster was theirs on Too Old to Sell Bakery Goods Tossing Day. He tried to tell them it was a stupidly long name and that the mistake wouldn’t happen again, but all of the air was taken out of his lungs when a boot connected with his gut. 

Kurt wasn’t sure if it was his screams or vomiting up the donuts that made them stop beating the shit out of him, drag his limp body away from the dumpster, and summarily toss it behind another. If he hadn’t been in so much pain, he would have thought it was funny that the last thing that went through his mind before he passed out was that he was never going to eat another donut again.

—

Kurt came to in the middle of the night, the sliver of moon and street lamps overpowered by the thick fog. Each breath, each movement was sheer agony. Desperate for pain killers, he slowly made his way across town to the 7-11. A glimpse at his reflection in the store’s glass door confirmed that he looked as bad as he felt. He couldn’t blame the store clerk for watching him when he stumbled inside, nor for confronting his fumbled attempt at stealing a bottle of Advil. 

When Kurt was led into the back room that was half office, half break room he expected the guy to say that he was calling the cops. What Kurt didn’t expect was the clerk to be a desperate closet case who told him that he could keep the Advil and his freedom, but only if he’d let him blow him. The choice shook Kurt to the core, jarring his brain enough to take in the situation better. The human store clerk was young, not more than early twenties with greasy hair and clearly high on something if the best action he could get was a homeless teenager who’d had the shit beaten out of him. It made Kurt brave enough to ask for a bottle of water to wash the Advil down with and a condom.

The pain killers taken, Kurt unzipped his pants, tugged them and his underwear down far enough to expose his dick, and rolled on a condom. He tried to think about Taylor Lautner naked in a dewy meadow as the guy sucked him off. It wasn’t the first time he’d been desperate enough to trade sex for goods. He had just naively thought it wouldn’t happen once he was out of the Reformatory. At least the guy hadn’t demanded the other thing. He was never going to be forced into the other thing ever again. He would die first. 

Kurt felt his erection waning and looked down to see if the clerk was mad about it. Apparently, it had only urged the guy on thinking he’d made him come from his sloppy blowjob. 

With his mouth still full of purple condom-covered dick, the guy stroked his own cock faster, gasping and moaning when he came. “That was amazing, Dude! Next time you need something, just ask. I’m here most nights. Wait until 3 a.m. though because that’s when the night manager leaves for his break. You got lucky this time because he called out sick.”

Kurt pulled off the condom and zipped up his pants, trying to hide his annoyance at the come splattered on them. He had no choice but to play nice. “I’ll remember that. Thanks for the Advil.” Finally allowed to leave, Kurt bolted from the store. After he was done throwing up behind the dumpster, he picked up a discarded pair of pantyhose. They were just as jizzed on as his pants, but his ribs hurt like hell and he wasn’t about to go back inside and trade for an ACE bandage. 

Relief flooded over him when he discovered a nearby warehouse with busted windows and no squatters. It was too dark to see if there were any gang markings. If there were, it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t survive another beating. He found a dark corner close enough to a window to escape, but far enough from the street that he couldn’t be seen. With shaking hands, he pulled up his T-shirt and wrapped the pantyhose around his ribs. They smelled even worse up close. With nothing more that could be done, he clutched the bottle of water and Advil close to his chest, curled up into a ball, and prayed to gods he didn’t believe in for the pain to stop.


	3. April Rhodes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late August 2016

—

Kurt wasn’t sure how many days he had spent in the warehouse, only that the bottle of Advil was empty and he didn’t scream anymore when he crawled to the corner he had branded as his bathroom. Even more desperate for food than he had been before the assault and in no shape to catch mice, he decided to try the Walmart. 

It was at the back of the store where his luck ran out yet again. Kurt thought he had been smart this time, waiting in the shadows, watching people go in and out of the largest dumpster without any hassle or major fighting between themselves. When no one had gone in for a while, he made his move. As he was climbing up, a hand grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him down and off the metal bin. He turned, ready to fight off his attacker, but the thin, older human woman had already let go of him. 

“No hybrids. I got enough to deal with managing this place and the human urban freelance recyclers going through the garbage. Add another race of nature’s talking ants and there’ll be trouble. So beat it, Kid, and don’t let me catch you here again.”

With a huff the woman walked away. Before he’d even taken one step back towards the dumpster she’d stopped, not bothering to turn around. “This is your last warning, Gelfling.” 

—

Kurt didn’t have to be told a third time and moved away, wondering if there was any place safe enough to find more than the remnants of canned dog food and moldy tuna noodle casserole. 

And soap. He had loathed showers at the Reformatory because of the creepy guards who got off watching the inmates, but at least he’d been clean. He had a feeling he was also going to start missing the gross disinfecting, pest-preventative showers too once their effect wore off.

“Don’t take it personally, Cutie. Ever since that scandalous news story broke that got her fired as McKinley’s cheerleading coach and Katie Couric naming her Loser of the Year, Sue Sylvester has been in a mood.”

Kurt turned towards the new voice, this one sounding drunk, but not unkind. What he found was a petite human woman with blonde hair and a low-cut dress that had seen better days. From the odor wafting from the thermos she held in her hand, he was guessing she liked her wine. A lot. 

“Don’t look so scared. I’m not going to hurt you. We’ve all been down on our luck at some point.” The woman poured some of the thermos’s liquid into the cap and held it out; drinking the contents herself when it was declined. “I’m guessing by that shiner on your face and the way you’re walking that your luck plumb ran out.”

Kurt shrugged, wincing when the movement hurt. “At the grocery store dumpster.”

“So you’re the newbie who went on Donut Day. Rick the Stick and his gang were bragging about that for days.”

“I’ll bet.” The woman seemed harmless enough and though he knew looks could be deceiving, Kurt also knew he needed help if he was going to survive in this town or survive at all. “Do you know where I can get some food?”

“I know where there’s a whole refrigerator full. I used to be a real estate agent, you see and Sandra never changed the code she uses on all the lock boxes.”

“I can’t get caught breaking and entering.”

“I’ll do the entering. All I need is a lookout. There’s no crime in standing on the sidewalk by some bushes minding your own business, is there?”

“Not technically.” Kurt didn’t have the energy to explain that for his kind, just existing seemed to be a crime. He was dead on his feet and would be dead soon anyway if he didn’t eat. “I’m in.”

“Then I believe we have a deal. I’m April.”

Kurt shook the woman’s hand, but didn’t give his name. He was desperate, not stupid. Well, stupid enough to stick around a town near the one he’d run away from, but not stupid enough to confirm that he was one of the Reformatory inmates the police were looking for. Miraculously, despite what he’d been through, he’d managed to hold on to his hat. The way April was studying him, he wondered if the beanie had gone astray and revealed his origins. If she had figured it out, it didn’t seem to bother her. 

With a wink and satisfied smile, she responded to his silence with an easy question. “How about I just keep calling you ‘Cutie’ for now?”

“That’s fine.”

—

A few hours later, Kurt found himself in a patch of woods scarfing down a sandwich April had made for him inside the house she’d robbed. He had three more just like it in the pockets of his cargo pants and a couple of juice boxes tucked in the front pouch of a hoodie that she’d procured for him as well. Apparently, in addition to the refrigerator, the previous owners hadn’t cleared out their guest bedroom as well as they’d thought and she had gotten herself a new dress and some lacy underwear she’d be using to seduce...someone. Kurt had stopped listening after that. The last thing he needed was to hear the details about her intimate exploits. 

The wooded area was something he’d seen from afar, but had always been afraid to go into. After the house job, April had told him that as long as he’d keep helping her out, she’d take him under her wing and teach him the ropes. “Lima’s not such a bad town if you know how to work it. And I know how to work it. One day though, I’m going to make it to the big Broadway. Just you wait and see.”

That the woods were a place the local homeless population hung out in was the first lesson. There was a large clearing in the center where folks pitched tents. Most of those belonged to hybrids and mixed race folks, as the majority of the full humans preferred to sleep in one of the local shelters. Near the western edge was a stream that provided water and minnows when the rains were steady enough to keep it flowing, and the trees had plenty of squirrels. Not that April partook of either, but she knew some kids who did.

Kurt took the implied, “hybrid kids,” with only a flattening of his ears. She wasn’t wrong to let him know of a free food source. It was just that April, like most humans, assumed hybrids having retractable claws and sharper teeth meant they could easily catch their own food. 

Mice weren’t so hard once you learned the trick of them. Minnows, he couldn’t say having never seen one before. Squirrels though? Kurt had tried to catch a squirrel when he was still wandering around the hybrid neighborhoods and his money was running out. Not only did he miss multiple times, but he had gotten laughed at by those who’d witnessed his fumbled attempts. The elderly hybrid man who had stopped to watch called him a damn fool who should know better. “Stupid fur who should stick to fucking dogs instead of acting like them,” had been screamed at him by a bleach-blonde human from her apartment’s balcony. Hungry or not, he hadn’t tried again. 

April went on to explain that drugs, moonshine, and sex were available in plenty if you wanted them for yourself or to offer up as trade. The woods were more private and provided a place for a different kind of clientele than that which the prostitutes who worked at the back of the 7-11 catered to. Kurt acknowledged the new information with a silent nod and didn’t mention that he knew what other transactions happened at the 7-11. This time when April offered him a drink, he took it. The wine was sweet with an after-burning taste. 

They were sitting on some rocks by the stream watching a hybrid family helping their young kids fill up bottles with water when April leaned in close to him. “I know this place looks like paradise, Cutie, but you have to be careful. Not just around the folks here, though most are alright. It’s Tammy Jean Albertson and her Church of the Eternal Hypocrite you need to watch out for. At least once a year she gets her panties in a bunch and convinces the police chief that the woods need to be cleared of us heathens. You see a human woman with flaming red hair and a protest sign, you beat it the hell out of here.” 

With a honk to his nose and a stumble that nearly had her falling into the stream, April Rhodes took her leave of him. It seemed that this warning was the last bit of information Kurt’s lookout services had gotten him in trade. “I gave you the discount rate ‘cause I gots a soft spot for the kids.”

—

A few days later, Kurt helped April sneak into a seedy motel that was more for pay by the hour activities than actual sleeping and an overnight stay. 

“They won’t let me rent a room anymore ‘cause I stole all the liquor from the mini bar and the mini bar itself! Though they never did suspect the lamp that was right between my knees and still plugged in.” April had regaled this tale to him with a grin and wink, demonstrating just how far up her skirt the lamp had been.

Agreeing to the deal she’d offered him, Kurt had pulled his beanie and hoodie down lower over his head, hoping his clipped ear and face were hidden enough not to be recognizable, and entered the motel’s lobby. The transaction turned out to be far easier than he’d expected. The clerk at the bullet proof partition didn’t even look up as Kurt slid $15 through the opening, nor when he took the key he was given in return. 

The money hadn’t bought much time, but it was enough for them both to have a badly needed shower, for April to clear out the mini-bar, and then together to steal all of the toiletries and towels. “Don’t look so scared, Cookie. Technically, they’re free with the cost of the room so it ain't really stealing.” 

Kurt didn’t believe her and didn’t feel like explaining why he was nervous. Taking a few bottles of shampoo, bars of soap, and toilet paper was a necessity. Stealing everything in sight wasn’t and yet there they were doing exactly that. On the other hand, he had escaped from prison and helped to steal a car in the process. There had been no turning back after that. The internal war with himself settled, he began to search the rest of the motel room as hard and fast as April was doing, hoping to find something useful and practical that he could carry without too much trouble.

Kurt’s biggest score was discovering a drab grey winter coat long forgotten in the bottom of the closet. There wasn’t anything in the pockets except for a pair of gloves which would be just as needed with the colder weather of fall and winter not too far away. April took the pink feather boa that was laying under the bed amongst a disgusting amount of condom wrappers and the used items they once held. She knew the prostitute the boa belonged to and the likely favor it could gain her for its return.

As much as he longed for a blanket and pillow as well, he stopped April from stealing the ones on the bed, pointing out that his superior sense of smell could tell they hadn’t been washed in days, likely longer given the stains even her human eyes could see. As for what his partner in crime had stuffed into her overly large purse and up between her legs, he didn’t know and didn’t want to know. After filling up his water bottle and pocketing a roll of toilet paper April had somehow missed, Kurt took one last look around, put on his new coat, and stood as look out while the woman made her leave before taking his own. 

It had been a good day. As for night, well, that was to be determined. Finding places to squat in were getting harder to find and he was still too scared to spend much time in the woods. He wasn’t ready to be around that many people again nor was he healed enough to face the dangers they represented. In the end, he chose a white, two story house a few blocks over from the woods in a quiet neighborhood. The lights were on in a couple of the rooms, but there were no cars in the driveway and the space under the front porch was missing its lattice work on one side. With a glance around to see if anyone was watching, he slipped inside and fell asleep.


	4. Lessons and Old Lady Mercedes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mid-September - late September 2016

—

Kurt didn’t see April for a couple of weeks after that, but learned on his own that the maids at the motel left their carts out when they went inside each room to clean it. If you timed it right, you could steal a few items. A new bar of soap and roll of toilet paper were the most precious things he now owned aside from the map, water bottle, coat, and gloves. It was more than he had to his name at the Reformatory. Uniforms and undergarments with your number sewn onto them didn’t count given how easy it was for other inmates to steal or destroy them. Kurt put “a change of clothes” on his mental Must Acquire list. Bathing didn’t do much when the same dirty clothes had to be put back on. 

Kurt was also learning, often the hard way, which areas of town were semi-safe, which ones weren't at all, and which had the best pickings. He discovered which neighborhoods he could walk down without getting harassed or the cops called on him, which abandoned buildings were safe enough to spend the night or day in and which ones were best left to Lima’s gangs and semi-homeless drug users. 

The evening Kurt went to the woods to fill up his water bottle, wash up a little, and go to the bathroom, he saw some people taking turns cooking small meals over a campfire. As there was a mix of hybrids and humans he felt it was worth a chance to try and join them. If it turned out that it wasn’t, he had two ways memorized for getting out of there fast. Along the way over he picked up a stick and attached the two mice he’d caught earlier. When allowed space at the fire he did as the others were doing with their catches, hot dogs, and foil wrapped foods. 

His meal smelling done, Kurt retreated and found a spot to eat by himself. Raw mice were gross, chewy, crunchy, and absolutely disgusting. Unfortunately, it turned out that campfire cooked mice weren’t any better and had an additional taste of char to go along with the other flavors. It was one of the easier lessons he’d learned and at least this one could be rinsed out by consuming a lot of water and scrubbing his tongue with the end of his sleeve. 

—

Late September brought with it additional new discoveries and resources. There were summer gardens, abandoned or forgotten about as the season waned, that garnered him a few meals. When Kurt was picking some old tomatoes in one yard an older Black human woman came out, gave him a hug with a huge smile on her face and kissed his cheek. She called him Roderick and asked how his day at work had gone. She was clearly confused, but kind, praising him for being so sweet helping her weed her precious vegetable garden, and to keep it up so she could make him something special. 

Not having anything else to do and wanting to repay her for not chasing him off and letting him keep the tomatoes, Kurt did as asked. With nearly everything dead, there wasn’t much to do but clear away the weeds, pocket a few stray beans that had fallen from the vines and still looked edible, and smooth over the remnants of the mulch. 

His reward was a plate of chocolate chip cookies that were apparently Roderick’s favorite. He sat with the woman at her patio table, eating the cookies he knew would make him sick, and drinking her too-sweet iced tea. She was so happy to have her handsome man home and tell him everything that she’d been up to - making the garden grander than last year’s, planting her favorite flowers, and missing his sweet voice all the while. Roderick was her husband it seemed and traveled a lot for business. 

It was getting late and Kurt needed to get going before the neighborhood’s residents came home from work. The woman’s yard and house exterior didn’t have any places he could easily sleep in unnoticed for the night. When he kindly said he needed to leave, but would be back soon, the woman came out of her memories and into the reality of now.

“Who are you? Have we met, young man? And what pray tell are you doing in my yard?”

Kurt tried to fight down his panic. “I’m...I’m Kurt. You asked me to help clean up your garden.”

The woman looked out to where Kurt was pointing. “I supposed I did. Sometimes I forget, you know. You did a good job. What did you say your name was again?”

“Kurt, Ma’am.” He held out his hand for her to shake, glad he’d wiped off the dirt before sitting down to eat. 

“Ma’am. Aren’t you sweet and full of manners? You can call me Mercedes if you’d like. Or Old Lady Mercedes fits better now, I guess. Though I know I still got my looks.” 

Kurt liked her laugh. It was full of joy and sass. She was the kindest person he’d met since escaping from the Reformatory. April was nice, but she always expected something in return for anything she gave him or helped him acquire. Old Lady Mercedes just seemed to want the companionship. “I can come by another day and help you out more if you’d like.”

“Oh, that’s so kind of you to offer!”

“It’s not a problem and thank you. I really have to go now, but I’ll be back. I promise.”

“Don’t be gone too long this time, Roderick. I miss your smile and voice .”

“I miss yours too...Sweetheart.” Kurt felt bad for leaving the elderly woman in such a state, but he was hearing cars pull into driveways and parents telling their kids to help them unload the groceries and get ready for dinner. He would be back though. He wasn’t going to break that promise. Old Lady Mercedes was lonely, and honestly, he was too.


	5. The Man and His Wife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late September 2016, time span is 1 night and 1 day

—

Kurt had only made it a few blocks away before he had to give up trying to get to the warehouse he had been planning to sleep in. Spotting a house he was familiar with, he was relieved to see both the truck and car in the driveway as they would act as a bit of cover. Kurt slipped around to the back behind the garage, made himself as small as possible, and waited until night fell. 

Just as he was about to make his way to the front porch, the middle aged human woman who lived in the house came out with a paper bowl, set it down on the patio, and started talking to someone or something that wasn’t there. 

“Here you go, Mr. Fluffy Pants. It’s not much, just a bit of rice and some leftover chicken bits, but there’s bad weather coming and I thought a little cat like yourself could do with a meal. There’s plenty for Mrs. Tawny Tums too if she comes around later. Have a good night, Sweetie.”

Kurt really hoped the woman wasn’t talking to him. He hated being compared to cats and dogs. It was racist as fuck. He didn’t go around telling humans they looked like shaved monkeys and apes. A few minutes after the woman had gone back inside the house, he heard a soft meow. Guess there was a stray cat hanging around here after all. 

Despite his upbringing, Kurt wasn’t a cruel person by nature. Yet, if the weather was indeed going to turn bad, it would be harder for him to acquire food too. Taking a chance, he darted out, grabbed the bowl before the cat could get to it, and retreated to the semi-safety of the garage. The leftover chicken was mostly skin and cartilage. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, but this time he decided to spare himself from the torture of having to choke something down he didn’t feel like eating. He scooped the rice into a well-used baggie and put it into a pocket. After nibbling off some of the meat clinging to the chicken bones, he left the rest alone and put the bowl back where the woman had left it for the cat. The cat who was now sitting at the edge of the patio and staring at him with what he would swear was disdain. Gods, he hated cats. 

The humans who lived in the house didn’t come back out, so he felt it was safe enough to settle in for the evening as well. Instead of relieving himself behind the garage as he’d been planning to do, he headed straight for the front porch and crawled under it. Lying on his side, he unzipped his pants, pulled out his dick, and began peeing on the ground near the entrance he’d just gone through. 

Kurt hated marking his territory. It was embarrassing and made him feel like he was no more evolved than the stupid cat. Yet the thousands of years of evolutionary instinct inside his sentient brain was telling him he would be safer from predators tonight if he did so. A cat wasn’t so much a predator as it was something that could steal his food and spread diseases and fleas. The smell would keep other hybrids away too. All he had to go by was instinct some days and it had often saved his ass. Not always, but enough times that he caved to it now. Dick still in his hand, Kurt shuffled over to the under-porch’s other opening and marked that as well. When his bladder was empty, he tucked his bits back into his pants, and tried to find a comfortable position to sleep in. What landscaping marble was doing under the porch instead of out in the yard, he didn’t know. But like he had thought earlier that evening, beggars couldn’t be choosers and at least this place was dry.

—

It was pouring when Kurt woke up to the sound of thunder rolling across the sky, followed by a loud crack of lightning. Contemplating going back to sleep, he bolted upright at the sound of the back door banging open. He muffed his curse as his head connected with the underside of the porch floor and scrambled to a corner near an opening, wanting to both hide and be ready to flee the second he could make his escape. 

Kurt heard more than saw the couple’s son, a tall and lanky teenager. The guy was grumbling about having to wake up early on a non-school day and take out the trash when it was raining. Kurt wanted to tell the idiot that at least he had a place to live that was dry and warm. He also wanted to dig through the newly deposited garbage, but if it wasn't a school day that meant the guy would be home. People being home wasn’t safe, not while they were awake at least, and the number of humans he met that he could trust could be counted on zero fingers.

The parents seemed okay. Not that he’d ever interacted with them nor did he visit their yard more than once or twice a week. When he was there, he’d never heard any screaming or yelling and their kid never had bruises on his face and arms. The man was a mechanic given the tire and lube shop logo on the side of his truck and the overalls he always wore. Sometimes there was a tow truck in the driveway. Kurt tried to stay away on those days as the guy would make runs in the middle of the night. It had happened once and he’d nearly been seen under the porch. 

The wife was harder to figure out. Maybe she was a teacher or worked in an office. Her face wasn’t on any real estate For Sale or advertising signs which ruled out that profession. She didn’t work at the Reformatory and he had never seen her wear a police uniform or pull up in a cop car. From the garbage remnants and food they put out for the stray cat, neither of them was a professional nor amateur chef. 

Most important of all, when he peered in the basement windows he didn’t see one of his kind tied up. Had never seen hybrids wearing a collar, handcuffs, shackles, or other form of tether working around their yard. There were no hybrid smells at all in the truck bed, garbage, recycling, yard, or garage. There was none of that in the entire neighborhood as far as he could tell. He’d run as fast and far away as possible the one time he’d ended up on a street that did. For weeks it had given him nightmares about being locked back up at the Reformatory or in someone’s basement. As if the regular nightmares about that hellhole weren’t bad enough.

The truth was that he didn’t know much about the people who lived in the house he’d come upon one night during his ongoing search for food and shelter. But the place felt calm to him. At least the couple did. Their kid he didn’t trust at all. He could probably take him in a fight, but that would defeat his need to stay out of sight and not be memorable when he wasn’t. 

Which is why, after the guy had entered the house and slammed the back door shut, and before anyone else could leave, Kurt left the shelter of the porch and was soaked instantly. He didn’t know where he was going to spend the rest of the day. With the rain, maybe the high school wouldn’t be having football practice and he could check out its dumpsters. Unlike the kids he’d grown up with, those who were free threw out a ton of food. If it wasn’t for all of the damn activities, PTA meetings, and whatever else happened in public schools after the educational part was over, he would have frequented their dumpsters more often.

—

Kurt studied McKinley High School from the relative safety of a set of bleachers. He rubbed at his elbow, a painful reminder of what had happened when he’d made the mistake of not staking out the high school’s athletic field and exits before exploring said dumpsters the week before. The tater tots had been good though. Not worth the beating the two jocks had given him and the subsequent injury, but even cold and mixed in with other food waste, they’d filled him up and provided enough for later meals. He was also grudgingly grateful that they hadn’t rebroken his still healing ribs. Fucking spoiled assholes.

This time, the dumpsters were locked tight, but someone had left the “Employees Only” door closest to them unlocked. The stillness of the building and surrounding grounds made him feel brave, so he slipped inside. Instinctively, he looked up and around for video cameras. Seeing none, but hearing footsteps, Kurt ducked into the nearest room, crouched below the door’s blind covered window, and held his breath. Whoever the footsteps belonged to, the man was pissed, ranting to himself about how a Figgins could shove it with the new budget cuts and that he was going to take a long lunch break like he deserved. 

Feeling he was safe for the moment, Kurt stood up and explored the room. It looked like a combination of the mess hall kitchen and sewing and laundry work detail rooms he’d spent years toiling in. It took a few minutes of fighting down a sudden panic attack to realize what was missing. There were no shackles at the stations. The sewing machine tables weren’t made of metal. No “U” shaped bars holding lengths of chain awaiting a pair of handcuffs were bolted to them. No stack of old buckets sat to the side ready to be shoved between inmates' legs so the guards wouldn’t have to bother taking them to the bathroom. Best of all, there was no scent of fear except for his own. 

Not wanting to stay any longer than he had to, Kurt searched the room quickly. There was a dusty box labeled Lost & Found in the corner. Though it was filled to the brim, not much was useful. A black and grey knapsack with a broken strap however, was badly needed. Wearing a coat or even carrying it in the heat made him stand out. It would hold the rest of his meager possessions as well. He didn’t know what a Titans pep squad was, but the T-shirt and sweatpants meant a change of clothes at last. If they fit there wouldn’t be a need for modifications given that they were designed for hybrids which made them even better. Checking the classroom’s cabinets, he found a can opener, hand sewing supplies, and a veritable wealth of food. 

Afraid that the building would be locked up tight if he took too much and it was noticed, he swiped only the basics that could be eaten quickly and didn’t require cooking. In the fridge he found some yogurt and a sandwich each with a label reading, “Property of Karen. Do not eat or else!” There was a blonde-furred, race traitor hybrid guard at the Reformatory named Karen who was nearly as bad as the Commandant. He took the lot including her Lean Queen dinners in the freezer. 

Kurt stared at the washing machines and dryers with longing. He would have loved to have washed his clothes, but knew it would take too long. His own system wasn’t even close to perfected yet and April kept refusing to wash them in the houses she robbed. There was laundry detergent and fabric softener, but one whiff of the bottles made him recoil. He wanted to screw Taylor Lautner in a lilac field, not smell like one.

Making certain that everything appeared to be the same as he’d found it and a furtive look through the door’s window to check to see if the hallway was clear, Kurt beat a hasty retreat. He didn’t have any hope that he’d have such luck next time, but was thankful that he’d had the chance at all.

If it was still raining come nightfall, he’d check out the man and woman’s place. Though their direct back yard neighbors had only a semi-private fence there were enough landscaping trees that provided enough cover to not be seen by them. The back of their garages didn’t quite line up, but as far as Kurt knew, he’d never been seen while behind the couple’s. What it meant for his case was that the rain might allow him to take a shower or at least wash out some of his clothes if enough water had collected in the recycling bins. It was worth a gamble at least and he was smelling bad enough to take the risk.


	6. Illness Comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late September 2016 to Very Early October or at least earlier October than the next chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Death ideation, reference of past child deaths, forced prostitution/dub-con, child abuse, and molestation

—

Kurt knew life would be hard on the streets. Hell, he’d been living that reality for a couple of months now. What he hadn't counted on was getting sick. Or rather, he stupidly hadn’t considered how much it would suck to be sick while homeless. At least at the Reformatory they had a medic. Not a good one and they were always quitting, but if the guards let you visit the Infirmary, most of the time the medic on duty would give you something to ease the symptoms. 

Out here, he had nothing and nowhere to turn to. He was getting sicker by the hour and starting to panic that the really bad fur flu that had run rampant through the Reformatory had returned. All of the newbies, some of his bunkmates, and kids from other cell blocks had died. He had been eleven years old, forced to carry their bodies to the massive pit that had been dug on the edge of the grounds and toss them in. And he’d been sick as hell, desperately trying to hide it, terrified that he was going to end up buried there too. 

Now at fifteen and completely on his own, Kurt felt the same way. He was going to die and no one would notice. No one would care. Just another dead fur who didn’t matter. He had to try and fight it though because he was Kurt Elizabeth again, not a number and no longer a part of the prison whose brand was burned onto his chest. Despite the hells he’d been through since he was six years old, he didn’t want to die. Not really. Not most days anyway, even if he did feel like death warmed over being roasted on a barbecue spit.

April Rhodes had been no help as her preferred method of clearing the lungs was hot toddies. Multiple hot toddies. In the woods, he didn’t even get the chance to ask if there was a free clinic or traveling doctor that would come by from time to time to treat the homeless population. The minute the humans heard him cough, they had thrown out slurs, blaming his kind for being plague carriers, and chased him off with threats he knew he couldn’t fend off in his ever-worsening state. Most of the hybrids, even the ones who were also sick, covered their faces and turned away as well. 

A mixed race family of two moms and a couple of kids took one look at him and hurried in the opposite direction. Their teenager turned back with a sympathetic look of understanding, “There’s a clinic on First Street by the nail salon. You could try there.”

The clinic, it turned out, did take hybrids as patients, but demanded payment upfront. Money that he didn’t have and had no way of getting. Each day that passed after being rejected by the clinic felt like he was getting closer to death's door. His fever refused to break and was alternating with chills. Each gasped breath brought a round of coughing and searing pain to his throat. Now desperate for anyone with a semblance of a medical degree to give him something to clear his lungs of the torture they were in, he tried a veterinarian's office. The human staff had laughed at him and then called the police.

The multi-block sprint fleeing the animal hospital made it harder to breathe with each passing minute. With nowhere else to turn, Kurt dragged himself to the 7-11. When Kurt saw the night manager leave on his break, he entered the store, grabbed a box of the strongest cold and flu medicine he could find, a bottle of cough syrup, a quart of orange juice, and a box of condoms. The clerk from before grinned as he approached the counter and then positively beamed when Kurt uttered the words he swore he never would again. “I need to make a trade.”

Exhausted and hating his body for coming two of the three times the clerk had sucked him off, Kurt wiped the guy’s come off his hand and pretended to have enjoyed the additional “bonus” of being required to give him a handjob. The guy’s jaw had become sore during the last round and so had wanted to try something different. How a person that strung out could recharge that quickly and come so often, he didn’t know and didn’t want to think about anymore. 

The transaction finally completed, Kurt gathered his goods and found an abandoned warehouse to collapse in. He wasn’t sure if it was the same one he’d used before, but it smelled like it. Or maybe that was just the smell of the guy’s jizz on his pants again and the fever clouding his brain. He took the highest dose of the flu medicine as the package recommended and washed it down with half the orange juice and a swallow of the cough syrup before falling asleep. 

His fever-induced dreams held no comfort. The sneering guards didn’t need a pit to dump his body in. They pulled him from the packed cage of unseeing eyes and left him to rot in the damp darkness of crumbling concrete walls and scurrying rats. 

“Mom!” Tears streamed down his face as called out for the only person who had ever loved him. The person whom the men with the handcuffs had ripped away from his arms and let die in a jail cell all alone. The same kind of men who had ripped off his clothes, burned his chest with a metal stick, cut off part of his ear, and then locked him up in jail too. 

Maybe the humans were right. People like him didn’t matter at all and never had. Furs only existed to be worked and abused, to be used for perversities by those who had no humanity despite their solitary claim to it. A sick hybrid had no worth at all. Kurt didn’t believe in any gods, but if there was a heaven, maybe he could see his mom again. Death wouldn’t be so bad then. It would be better than living.

Death didn’t come and Kurt wasn’t sure if he was relieved by that. When he had felt he was able to walk again and had eaten what little food the rats had missed, he slung his chewed up knapsack over his back and headed for the woods.

—

Kurt had a friend once at the Reformatory who had run away from home and lived on the streets until she was caught. During her short time in juvie, Unique had imparted upon him the wisdom she had gathered while she was still free. The first was to always watch your back even while you were sleeping. The second was to keep yourself as clean as possible. Not only was it healthier, but it made you less noticeable. Be true to yourself, but blend in and keep moving if you can. She didn’t get to teach him more than that, but it had all helped.

The second lesson was the hardest to keep up with. Showering at the Reformatory meant leers and demands for a show from the guards. It meant unwanted touches and the forced touching of others if you wanted to eat or not get beaten. It meant lining up for Commandant Ryerson so he could drool and coo over the boys, deciding which would soon be ripe enough for more personal attention during their next private inspection.

Kurt hated bathing while homeless because when he realized he was being watched, it would trigger flashbacks to those years. The first time he’d tried washing up in the backyard of a hybrid neighborhood, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed given that there were no cars in the driveway of the house he’d chosen. He was rinsing the soap off with a garden hose when he heard a noise. An elderly hybrid woman had come out of the house and was sitting in her rocking chair on the back porch. Her grin was wide as her eyes roamed all over his body. 

“Oh, I don’t mind, Little Hottie. You remind me of my first boyfriend. Take all the water and time you need. I’m enjoying the show!” 

He had picked up his clothes and knapsack and run buck naked for two blocks until he could find a spot with enough shadows to get dressed in. Kurt refused to go back to that neighborhood again. It wasn’t just the watching. It was the high probability that the woman would talk, and talking meant he’d get noticed more. The last thing he wanted was to be noticed.

Inevitably he was noticed again and this time it was worse. Kurt had thought he’d chosen a spot in the rain-bloated stream that few used in the homeless woods. The bushes and trees were closer together forming a semi-circle around this particular section of the bank. Though desperate to completely wash the fever sweat from his body and clothes, he had just stripped down to his underwear afraid to be fully nude in such a vulnerable state. With the lingering congestion addling his brain and dampening his senses, Kurt couldn’t hear or smell the man creeping up behind him, wasn’t aware of him at all until he saw the flash of a grey-furred arm coming around from behind and the hand pushing its way into his underwear to cop a feel of his dick. The fondling fingers lingered until the shock wore off and Kurt turned around. His curse was more of a growl as he tried to hit the guy, but the man had moved out of striking distance easily. With a little jig and a laugh, the pervert took off his hat to reveal his own clipped ear. “Welcome to the Woods, Newbie.” 

Half wishing his fever hadn’t broken and his body was still lying in the abandoned warehouse, Kurt searched the area to make certain the former inmate had indeed gone. Needing to get clean, he entered the waist deep water. It was the same frigid temperature as the Reformatory’s showers had been and he shook from the trauma of what had just happened to him and the years of violations that had come before. Escaping had only stopped the worst of the brutalities. The rest seemed fated to never cease. He needed to either accept his new life or pray that his fever would return and end everything. He wasn’t sure what he wanted the most.


	7. October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very Early October 2016 through the end of October 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A happier chapter to make up the previous one. The Halloween House used to be on the next block over from me and we were sad when the son and mom moved. That section is in honor of them.

—

Early October brought with it a conflicting mix of weather. The mornings were perfect in Kurt’s opinion. “Not too hot. Not too cold. All you need is a light jacket.” He’d heard that line in a movie once. The afternoons were annoyingly hot. Not the blistering heat of summer nor the death humidity of August, nor the, “Why won’t it cool off, haven’t we had enough summer?” of September, but still hot enough to be uncomfortable. The nights were getting colder, though not so bad that he was freezing. The coat he’d found at the motel helped with that. 

Fucking climate change. He’d read the truth about that in a real science book when he was fourteen. Not the creationist bullshit textbooks where Jesus rode a dinosaur and hybrids were made by god on the seventh day to lessen humans’ toils that the Reformatory used. It was an enlightening read to say the least and confirmed everything he’d been taught by his mom, non-Christian inmates, and the teachers at the grade school he used to go to before he was arrested. Miss Castle had followed through on her deal of getting him the book in exchange for telling her where the Reformatory’s classrooms kept their glue. 

Kurt wished he had the book now because he was honestly a bit bored. Garbage and recycling pickup had happened the day before and none of the residents in the neighborhood he was currently taking shelter in had put out anything new. The local gangs and the homeless higher on the pecking order had already raided the good dumpsters and Sue Sylvester wasn’t budging on her no hybrids scrounging around the Walmart’s. It had been a fruitless try, but at least she’d let him off with another warning instead of calling the cops.

It was raining now too. Of course it was. Lima seemed to have only three things - a lot of racists, a lot of gangs, and a lot of rain. The first two were probably why the hybrid juvenile detention center was always full. The latter was because the idiots kept voting for science-denying politicians.

—

Mid-October brought him some afternoons with Old Lady Mercedes - putting her vegetable garden to bed, planting fall bulbs, and laying fresh mulch around her mums and rose bushes. Kurt only knew how to plant and pick farm crops, not take care of private garden ones, but Mercedes taught him on her lucid days. On her off ones, he was glad he could make her happy thinking her beloved Roderick was still alive. They sang a lot on those days. While he didn’t know most of the songs, he picked them up fairly quickly and enjoyed their lyrics and tunes. Most of all, he loved to listen to her sing them. Even at her advanced age, the woman had an amazingly powerful and rich voice. 

Mercedes continued to pay him in baked goods and sometimes gave him a few dollars. April loved the chocolate treats, but when all she had to trade was a few sips of liquor, he ate them himself. Chocolate cake and brownies left his stomach full for a little while. The booze April drank usually made him sicker than the chocolate did. 

Only when Mercedes was lucid did he accept her money. Kurt felt it was wrong to do so when she thought he was Roderick and wanted him to run to the store. Since he couldn’t enter a store aside from the 7-11 safely, he would wait a little while and then pretend that she’d dropped some money on the ground and was handing it back to her. Sometimes he had to sneak it into her pocket or on the plate of cookies. The money he did accept was never much, but it helped and he was grateful for it. 

If circumstances were different, he wouldn’t have taken the money at all. Visiting Old Lady Mercedes was nice. It gave him a place to go to and something to do. The work was easy compared to what he was used to and the company far, far better. Some days it gave him a reason to keep living instead of feeling like he was floating around in a useless, half-existent state. Most importantly, he loved her company and the Kurt of three months ago didn’t think he’d ever say that about a human.

—

Late October brought with it fall leaves and therefore more visits to Old Lady Mercedes’s yard. She’d leave the rake out for either himself or her husband and he knew it was his clue as to what work needed to be done. In payment for sleeping under their porch and having great recycling bins and garbage, he would have raked the leaves of the human couple's yard too. The chance of them finding out that it wasn’t just the stray cats who came around their yard for food and shelter wasn’t worth the risk though. Plus, they had their son to help out. 

What had been worth the risk was watching the spectacle of their new neighbors moving in across the street. He’d been picking through the man and woman’s garbage when he heard a large truck rumbling down the street. Needing to get out of sight quickly, he ducked under the front porch and peered out the small hole in the concrete support wall. 

From all the yelling and screaming coming from both the numerous adults and kids, it appeared that the triplets, or “red-headed demon spawn” as their mother called them, had gotten kicked out of yet another school district, forcing the family to move. In contrast to the mom who was ranting directions to her husband, brothers, and cousins as to where to put the boxes and furniture being hauled out of the moving truck and their own pickups, her husband was quiet and resigned. A broken man who had gotten sucked into his wife’s batshit family when he had accidentally knocked her up when they had gotten drunk at a high school party and who saw no way out except the grave. 

At least that was the story Kurt made up in his head. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to actually marry the woman and procreate with her. He couldn’t imagine her ever being calm and nice. She reminded him a lot of Officer Schuester’s wife. When Mrs. Schuester became the Reformatory’s medic all hell had broken loose. She could be manipulated at times though which had worked in his favor. 

The kids clearly took their cues and energy from their mother. Wherever the human juvenile detention center was, Kurt was sure they’d end up there eventually. Either there or prison, but his bet was that the cops’ and judges’ patience wouldn’t wait until they were old enough for the adult facility. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was better than the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. It probably was. The kids were human after all and clearly the cops were more lenient given the fact that they hadn’t been locked up already.

Kurt forced himself to shake thoughts of the Reformatory off and focus on the now. There had been another crash and he wanted to see which precious bit of tacky had been dropped this time.

—

Halloween was both scary and fruitful. Thanks to the dumpster of a pop up Halloween store, he’d been able to acquire enough bits to make a suitable costume. Kurt wasn’t stupid enough to go trick-or-treating, but was brave enough to walk through a few neighborhoods picking up candy dropped by kids who didn’t like what they’d gotten or had been scared by decorations or the costumes of others on the street. Kurt only vaguely remembered going trick-or-treating as a kid. He thought he had been a Power Ranger, but that could have been a fantasy he’d made up during his first year in juvie. 

There was one great house that had gone all out with the lights, cobwebs, skeletons, bats, and every kind of prop imaginable. From the conversations he'd heard around him, the mom and her adult son apparently loved Halloween and looked forward to it every year. They dressed up and handed out bags of treats to anyone who passed by, including himself. Most of the kids and parents were locals and the pair knew them all by sight and candy preference, if not by name. Looking inside the Halloween themed paper bag, he could see that every piece of candy was hybrid safe. There was also a little book of mazes and a small pencil. They were now his favorite people.

Even if the Girardi triplets and their teenage cousins had been a nightmare, toilet papering every house and egging every car on the man and woman’s street, forcing him to find shelter elsewhere, it had been a pretty good night and a nice way to end the month. He was more than thankful for it.


	8. Election Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> November 8, 2016 to about 2 weeks/mid-November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though parts of this chapter were written a year before the 2020 U.S. elections, the majority was written the week of. I tried my best through the gut wrenching anxiety of the multi-day wait for the election results and seeing the expected violence on the news, all the while fearing for my friends’ lives and their and my own family’s and other friends’ rights. In other words: I tried my best, so please don’t criticize the irregularities in pattern flow too harshly. Thank you. :)

—

Unlike the majority of the homeless hybrid community, Kurt had never followed American politics. As an incarcerated hybrid juvenile, it hadn’t mattered who was in charge be it a liberal or conservative. He was still locked up, still abused, still worked from sunup to past sundown with no hope for his freedom or future. Escaping from the Reformatory had only stopped some of the torture and the end to guards only allowing the inmates to watch conservative news broadcasts lest they “get ideas which were all liberal lefty lies.” His fellow delinquents who had lived on the outside longer than he had, had only either griped about that “flaming liberal Malia” or naively swore that she would change everything for the better. 

Even so, given that he had nothing else to do at the time, on Election Day he watched the small battery powered TV someone had set up in a hybrid-dominant part of the woods. He joined in with the uttered curses of despair when the liberals Warren & Ocasio-Cortez lost, if only to get offered a sip of the bottle of homebrew that was being passed around. The nights were getting colder and during times like these the liquor and press of bodies helped to take the edge off the chill.

Despite his apathy, Kurt couldn’t help but hear and take note of the things people were saying. How come January with the House and Senate now red along with the new president, any rights hybrids had managed to hold on to in theory would be completely stripped away. It was more dire for the LGBTQIA community, and he was part of both - a secret he desperately tried to hide from everyone. It all boiled down to the fact that he was doubly screwed and needed to educate himself on how much worse his life would soon be. He was also going to have to find out what the hell the House and Senate were. 

—

Lima, it turned out, had a decent public library and unless the particularly nasty racist librarian was working and schools weren’t out, it was a warm and pretty nice and quiet place to hang out for a few hours to read. Sometimes a person would forget to log out of one of the computers and he could get online. 

Kurt found himself missing the shitty education the Reformatory provided and was determined to get a better one on his own. He had no clue what he would do with it, but it kept his mind busy and less bored. There were books on psychology which he planned on reading soon for help with his panic attacks and to overcome his traumas. Not that he had hope on that, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. An old Reader’s Digest book about homesteading taught him a few things about surviving off the land that he hadn’t figured out on his own or learned from April and others in their situation. 

The books on France were fascinating and he imagined himself strolling along the Seine eating gourmet cheese and a fresh baguette. Then he and his handsome companion would climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower with the other tourists pretending that it was terribly pedestrian while secretly loving every minute of it. 

French politics weren’t that great. Muslims, be they human or hybrid, being their preferred group to discriminate against, but deciding to learn French gave him another thing to occupy his mind with. It was much better than thinking about American politics. 

It had only taken him a week to read enough history and current news articles to realize why the hybrid population was filled with dread. That the fear was layered beyond the increase in the number of bigots in their pickup trucks waving flags driving up and down streets terrorizing folks, and the human gangs making it harder and more dangerous to gather resources. 

What Kurt couldn’t find an answer to was why, even when there was a liberal president and so-called protections for hybrids and children, he was ripped away from his mom and locked away when he was six years old. Why even adult hybrids had allowed kids, from the youngest to oldest, to be abused in the ways he had been and done a lot of it themselves. 

Kurt wiped away the tears that were forming in his eyes and refocused on French nouns. He hated bees, but "une abeille” was fun to say. That is until he discovered he was pronouncing it all wrong. It was still better than learning that come January, hybrids would no longer be considered legal citizens even if they were born in the United States of Straight White Humans. They would have no rights. No protections at all. Kurt was fully aware that his life was always going to suck, but if he distracted himself by focusing on his education, it would eventually suck in badly pronounced French.

—

“What did I tell you about hanging around here, Kid? Beat it before one of the pubescent, Axe soaked morons mars that lady face of yours again.”

Kurt couldn’t help but shiver from both nerves and the harsh fall winds. It had taken him a month to save up this much money and days to work up the nerve to come to the Walmart and ask for help from its manager. The racist librarian had been working all week and chased him out of the building and across the parking lot the minute he’d stepped inside. Facing Sue Sylvester again was even more terrifying. “Please, I have money.”

“Let’s see it.”

Reaching into an inner pocket of his coat, he pulled out a baggy half filled with dollar bills, change, and a precious five Old Lady Mercedes had given him this morning. “It’s ten dollars.”

“What do you want?”

“Just a blanket. I’m not going to survive the winter without one.” Kurt studied the woman studying him, knowing what a huge chance he was taking, but with everything else, not feeling like he had any other choice. The 7-11 sold socks, not blankets, and those were kept next to the spray paint for a not-needing-to-keep-warm reason.

“You get one shot with me. You sure you want to spend it on this? I’m not a charity depot.”

“Please. I can’t go in there myself.”

Kurt relinquished the money when Sue grabbed for it, shaking her head before turning around to go back inside the store. He hoped he hadn’t been wrong about her and so he waited in the shadows. Waited and waited and kept his eyes, ears, and nose alert for the assholes who loved to make trouble for him every time he was near one of the areas they had declared as theirs. Who hadn’t gotten the message that just because they got the jump on him the first time and another when he was still healing from the initial beating, didn’t mean he wasn’t without skills. Juvie had taught him how to fight dirty after all. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

Eventually Sue came back out and thrust a large bag into his hands. “Remember what I said, Gelfling. I’m not a charity. Now beat it. I have to lock up the guns before I use them on the neo-Nazi toy soldiers myself and make sure those stress eating liberals left some ice cream for the rest of us.”

Kurt took the bag and offered a grateful smile. “Thank you.” 

Sue’s frown softened by the merest of fractions. “Sorry about the election, Kid. I tried running myself, but that damn Katie Couric stopped me.”

He watched her walk away and when she was out of sight looked inside the plastic bag. Not only was there a thick flannel lined fleece blanket, but an emergency mylar blanket, a multi-pack of hand warmers, and some protein bars. At the very bottom was the baggy containing his money. The risk of coming here had definitely been worth it.


	9. Holidays Suck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mid-November through a couple of days after New Years Day/Early January. TW: for a brief, non-graphic mention of Quinn being abused and repeatedly assaulted at the Reformatory at the end of the first scene. After the marker === is an expanded version of Kurt’s panic attack inducing flashbacks which features a graphic depiction of him being sexually abused at the Reformatory.

—

Kurt’s stomach growled at the smells wafting around every house and restaurant. All of Lima was celebrating Thanksgiving. Every last damn person except for him, and most of the other homeless hybrids and humans he supposed. Not that the Reformatory had ever really celebrated Thanksgiving nor any holiday, so technically he couldn’t say he missed it. Only twice that he could remember had some charity sent over Thanksgiving type foods, but the guards had hoarded most of it for themselves. Almost every new inmate would lament about missing all of the food at their annual family gatherings. Every damn TV show and movie showed the same things they talked about. He assumed that he and his mom had celebrated Thanksgiving too, and now that he was free he thought maybe after all this time he could finally have a bit of the holiday again. He had clearly thought wrong.

Kurt had heard that the local soup kitchen was serving up a special meal, so he’d gotten up early and made his way over. He wasn’t in line for long before a human woman with flaming red hair and too much makeup told him in a haughty voice that the food was for people and absolutely not for “the sons and daughters of bestial, immoral, devil-divined unions.” 

Wishing hybrids had evolved the ability to set people on fire with their minds, Kurt kept his hat and hoody covered head low and left. This woman was definitely the type who would turn him over to the police if she saw his clipped ear that marked him as an escaped inmate of the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. 

Not including himself, he had known dozens in juvie who’d had the cops called on them by bigots just like her. Quinn’s own father had sent her to the Reformatory and he was a full hybrid without an ounce of human DNA. His bible had apparently told him that it was perfectly fine for his own daughter to have her ear mutilated, her chest branded, and her body repeatedly violated in prison all for the so-called crime of having consensual premarital sex and no longer being his perfect virgin little girl.

People sucked. Religious hypocrites and bigots most of all.

—

For the hundredth time that day, Kurt angrily muttered that he really hated holidays. He hated Lima. He hated hiding in a patch of bushes that was more poison ivy than bush, waiting for one of the Breadstix busboys to take out the garbage. Garbage was what humans thought he was and while they feasted on turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and five kinds of pie, he’d be eating what they had deemed inedible and left behind on their plates. That is, if other people didn’t come around and fight him for the first or second dig through. Some days he actually won. From the ever-growing number of fellow homeless hybrids hiding and waiting for the same moment, it didn’t feel like it was going to be one of those days.

Fuck Thanksgiving. After what the colonizers had done to the native populations it shouldn’t be celebrated anyway. 

—

The next morning, desperate for something to eat after failing to get so much as a single bite of turkey at Breadstix, and knowing there was too much traffic to make another attempt at leaving the damn town, Kurt studied his well-worn map and the notations he’d marked on it. Choosing a small section he hadn’t been to in months because there wasn’t much there, he headed over, hoping that perhaps the pickings were now better. Unfortunately, there was only the same water tower, the same clump of pine trees, a small overpass with graffiti that made no sense, a few houses too far back from the road for him to feel comfortable checking out, and some kind of Unitarian church.

There were signs attached to the chain link fence that ran alongside part of the church’s property. “No race is illegal.” “You are loved.” “All are welcome here.” They felt familiar and Kurt wondered if these were the same people who had protested at the Reformatory’s gates and gotten a lot of kids in trouble when they went to grab the stuffed animals and cards that had been thrown over the fence. Though he had been smart enough to stay where he was and not go after a toy, the furious guards, new rules, week long lockdown, and tarps strung up to hide the grounds from public view affected every inmate. He wanted nothing to do with anyone naïve enough to think their charity wouldn’t harm the kids they were trying to protect. 

It was a large pride flag that made him stop and actually notice that a few tables had been set up by the parking lot’s entrance and the voice of a young, blonde, human girl calling out to him.

“Happy holidays! Are you homeless? Would you like a sandwich? They’re free!”

“Stacey, you shouldn’t assume he’s homeless.”

“He dresses like Sam did when we were homeless and Mom and Dad didn’t have time to pack up our clothes when the landlord evicted us.”

“It’s rude to assume. I’m going to go tell Dad.” 

“You go do that, Stevie. I’m going to give him a sandwich whether he is or not.”

Kurt watched the exchange between the two kids with both hope and trepidation. He didn’t need any trouble and didn’t want to be noticed and taken for what he was. With the colder weather it was getting harder to keep himself clean, and since he’d run out of thread, repairs on his clothing had ceased to be possible. The return of the girl’s voice brought him out of his worried thoughts.

“Here, have a sandwich.”

“Is it really free?” Kurt clutched his hand around the baggie of money in his pants pocket, not wanting to spend any of it unless he had to. He was hungry, but knew he could hold out longer.

“I promise it is. We made up a bunch of them inside the meeting house this morning.”

Kurt reached out for the offered food and was about to take it when a human man with the same blonde hair as the girl approached the table and put his arm around her.

“How’s it going, Princess?”

“I’m fine, Dad. I was about to give him a sandwich.”

Kurt swore that if he heard that phrase one more time he was going to lose it. With the girl’s dad here and now more attention focused on himself, he didn’t feel safe in the least. “I should go.”

“Wait, please.”

The man picked up a bag from the table and added his daughter’s sandwich to it along with a couple of others from a tray. “I’ve been there. It’s rough. Hard when you’re a kid. Harder still when you’re a parent of them. I know it’s not much, but some days, it’s the little things that help the most.”

“Thank you.” 

“Our UU is kind of on the small side and we’re not set up as a shelter, but there’s non-gendered bathrooms you could use to wash up in if you’d like. Services are at 10 o’clock on Sundays and there’s coffee hour afterwards. There’s a youth group too. Not many teenagers, but as the sign says, ‘All are welcome here’. On Christmas Eve we have a holiday potluck after the celebration candlelight service. The more the merrier.”

Kurt looked to where the man was pointing and forced a smile. ”I’ll consider it. Thanks for the sandwiches.” He clutched the paper bag tighter and walked away as quickly as he could, listening for sounds of following footsteps. The guy had pressed too hard on selling the place, and even if he hadn’t, he had no use for any kind of religion.

He walked another block and when he was certain no one was following him, he ducked into the shadows of an office building that was closed for the day. Kurt didn’t doubt that the family had been homeless and therefore was eager to see what was inside the bag. Maybe it would be his lucky day. As he pulled out the contents his face fell with disappointment and his tail beat out an annoyed staccato behind him. Either the charity bags weren’t meant for hybrids or the person in charge of making them hadn’t done their homework. 

The pair of thick socks would be warm and technically cover his feet, but the footbed was too long and the front seams were in a place that would irritate his toes. Hopefully layering them over his hybrid ones would reduce most of the discomfort.

The smooshed white bread sandwiches were soggy and two of them reeked of peanut butter and jelly. While he wasn’t allergic to nuts, he’d known hybrids who were. Someone in his cell block had died from anaphylactic shock when she’d been so desperate for food she’d stolen a guard’s cookies when he wasn’t looking, not realizing there were peanuts inside. One of the homeless moms who lived in the woods couldn’t tolerate them either and had cursed about food banks always putting jars of the stuff into the boxes they handed out. “Beggars can’t be choosers, but you’ve got to figure they have to be if the item will make you die.” The third sandwich was some kind of mystery meat, and as he was more than used to that, he decided it would serve as his meal for the day.

The banana wasn’t much better than what he’d find in dumpsters and that the Reformatory had fed him. At least the apple was firm and unbruised and could be saved for later longer than the sandwiches. It was hard not to wonder if it was from one of the farms he’d been forced to work. At least it didn’t trigger him as badly as some foods he’d picked did.

Kurt examined the next item in the small pile. The baggy smelled wrong and he soon discovered why. Inside was a mix of minced, dried vegetables - cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and kale. Taped to the outside was a square of paper informing him that the concoction could be turned into soup. Fucking death soup. The idiot humans really hadn’t done an ounce of research nor paid attention to their hybrid friends, assuming they had any. April might be agreeable to a trade, or would if there was ever water inside the thermos she always carried with her. 

The wet wipes would be useful and the small tube of toothpaste and toothbrush would be too. It had been months since he’d last brushed his teeth with anything more than water and the hem of his shirt. 

There was a flyer inviting him to Sunday service, describing the services and activities the church offered, and preaching the same message of how all were welcomed there and the seven principles of their beliefs. It all sounded nice in theory, but pretty words and privileged beliefs hadn’t done him shit. Kurt was about to toss away the damn thing when he realized he could use it as toilet paper. There was a new maid at the motel and she watched her cart like a hawk, leaving him forced to use leaves and grass. He was getting really tired of having plant bits clinging to his crack and the tip of his dick. 

After eating half of the overly-seasoned meat and cheese sandwich, he pocketed the rest, put the toiletries and socks into his knapsack, and left the baggie of death vegetables in the paper bag. If he couldn’t find someone to trade with, he would just chuck the thing. Broccoli and cauliflower would make him sick but they were still edible. The kale though. You didn’t fuck around with kale unless you had a death wish, and at the moment, he didn’t. Not for himself at least.

—

Christmas came and went much the same as Thanksgiving - being jealous as fuck of all the people that got to be inside a warm place eating their fill. Kurt hated himself for once again wishing that his mom was alive and wanting what he couldn’t even remember having. The things he saw in the windows of the houses he walked past - happy families, Christmas trees, decorations, and almost as important as the tables laden with food, a place to belong. Wanting things only led to disappointment and he knew better than to dream for a better life.

Like Thanksgiving Day, he was starving. The bag of food the dad at the UU had given him hadn’t lasted long. He didn’t know what was in the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but he’d vomited the first one up. That mess was followed by a week of non-stop diarrhea after eating the banana. If the uninhabited office building he’d crashed in was ever rented out, the occupants were in for a surprise. For him, it meant one of the shelters he relied upon and rotated through couldn’t be used again. 

All of the restaurant, grocery store, and restaurant dumpsters were either locked up tight by their asshole owners or picked clean before he could get a turn. Just looking was a battle some days. With all the family gatherings came an influx of teenagers and college students either kicked out of their homes or who had run away from them for the same reasons. 

Kurt had overheard one guy talking on the phone begging a friend to let him crash on their couch. Turned out the friend was just as homophobic as his mom was. When the guy caught him staring, he’d called him a stupid fur and told him to mind his own business. So much for thinking sympathetic thoughts. The fucking human could go screw himself and starve to death for all he cared. It was the Reformatory all over again when they got a new round of newbies. You looked out only for yourself and fought to maintain your place in the pecking order. Kurt flipped him off and walked away, knowing that even in his half-starved state he could take him easy. 

—

April had made a deal with him of food in exchange for making repairs to her cater-waiter outfit for a fancy party she was going to sneak into. She had ended up getting sick though and called the heist off. For half a minute he had considered going to the event alone and waiting around to see what leftovers would be thrown out. But given that it was in a rich and rough neighborhood in Lima Heights Adjacent, he didn’t want to risk the chance that someone who had connections to the Reformatory would see him. 

After he left the shack April was crashing in and hoping he wouldn't catch what she had, Kurt tried Old Lady Mercedes's house. He had been hoping to get something in exchange for some yard work, but the same as Thanksgiving, she wasn’t home. While cookies or money would have been nice, it was her companionship he missed the most. She was probably missing her Roderick too and worried that he wasn’t around.

—

If the neighborhoods he did dare to venture into hadn’t been so packed with cars and people driving around to see the Christmas lights and decorations of decked out homes, he would have scavenged their garbage cans and lawns. On his way to the woods, he’d seen more than one kid throw carrots and dog biscuits into the yard for Santa’s reindeer. Even mythical flying reindeer got a fucking feast. 

Despite having to fight flashbacks to his first days in the cage as a newly branded inmate of the Reformatory, where the guards threw dog biscuits at them and laughed and barked as he and the other terrified and starved little kids scrambled for anything resembling food, Kurt caved to temptation and tried to scavenge a few from a lawn. It took only one bite from a squirrel doing the same thing in the near pitch black corner to scrap the idea. His hand now hurt worse than when the rats and mice bit him. If he wasn’t in so much pain and too chicken shit to make a fire, he would have tried to catch the bastard and eat him instead.

—

Kurt did manage to score a few appetizers dropped from a platter being carried by a woman who had clearly needed to drink in order to handle the party her in-laws were throwing. At least that’s what he thought she was cursing about as she picked up most of what she had dropped on the ground, swearing the devil woman could eat her ass for all she cared. After the inebriated daughter-in-law had stumbled inside the house he quickly grabbed the bits she'd missed and shoved them into his mouth. He hated knowing for a fact that the dirt covered melon and cheese tasted much better than ass.

Wanting to get away from people who had it better, he made his way to the hybrid section of the woods. Near the clearing where people had pitched their makeshift tents, a couple of folks had started a small fire in a ring of rocks. It didn’t provide much warmth and he didn’t trust a single person there, but it was better than nothing. When they started singing Christmas carols, he left. There were no angels on high, no Good King Wenceslas to bring him a feast, and Santa’s reindeer were a bunch of dicks for how they’d treated Rudolph. 

—

It was a few days into the new year and Kurt was fifteen and seven months old. If TV shows and movies and the inmates who hadn’t been incarcerated as young as he had been were to be believed, he should be recovering from a hangover after spending New Year’s Eve at a wild party with his friends and dreading having to go back to school next week. He should be annoyed that he didn’t get into the electives he wanted and pissed that a teacher he’d thought was cool had failed him in math, again. 

He shouldn’t be scouring through dumpsters and trash cans debating about which was the safer thing to eat - the package of meat that had some green at the edges or the rat he’d caught who had been nibbling on it. He shouldn’t be trying not to freeze to death under some stranger’s front porch while a blizzard raged just inches away. 

Despite the hells he’d lived through, adjusting to a life of being homeless on the streets of Lima and the freezing hell he was enduring now, he knew it was better than the hell he’d run away from. He’d rather die out here than be touched by guards and Commandant Ryerson again.

Kurt couldn’t stop his body from shaking nor his breathing from speeding up. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed by a pair of vice grips. It was going to be a bad panic attack and he knew it. There was nothing he could do except to ride it out along with the storm. He shuffled as far back as he could get from the under-porch’s opening and drew the Walmart blankets and the frozen one that had been left for the stray cat around himself. If the weather didn’t kill him, this would continue to be his fate. With a resigned sigh, he let the memories flood in and repeat themselves on a loop, too tired to fight them or his fate anymore. 

====expanded, graphic version of the chapter ending====

It was a few days into the new year and Kurt was fifteen and seven months old. If TV shows and movies and the inmates who hadn’t been incarcerated as young as he had been were to be believed, he should be recovering from a hangover after spending New Year’s Eve at a wild party with his friends and dreading having to go back to school next week. He should be annoyed that he didn’t get into the electives he wanted and pissed that a teacher he’d thought was cool had failed him in math, again. 

He shouldn’t be scouring through dumpsters and trash cans debating about which was the safer thing to eat - the package of meat that had some green at the edges or the rat he’d caught who had been nibbling on it. He shouldn’t be trying not to freeze to death under some stranger’s front porch while a blizzard raged just inches away. 

Despite the hells he’d lived through adjusting to a life of being homeless on the streets of Lima and the freezing hell he was enduring now, he knew it was better than the hell he’d run away from. He’d rather die out here than to ever again be cavity searched and fondled by guards, and far worse, to be touched by Commandant Ryerson. To be pegged as one of his favorites. To be told by a guard to strip off his undergarments, only put back on his jumpsuit, and then have his hands, feet, and tail shackled to each other before being herded into the head of the prison’s office. 

The monthly “inspection” happened to all of the guys over the age of thirteen, but was usually limited to being stroked and touched and forced to give Commandant Ryerson a hand or blow job. But then he had turned fifteen and was outed. The “personal inspections” became far more frequent and he discovered firsthand that there was a deeper level of hell at the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. 

Kurt tried to push away the memories but it was in vain. The flood engulfed him and all too vividly came back the feeling of the Commandant peeling away his prison jumpsuit and stroking his chest and genitals before turning him around and bending him over the desk. The sound of pants being unzipped would be next, then the pain and burn of a dick being thrust into his ass over and over again until the man came with a high-pitched moan. The act that was always followed by the taste of the same slimy dick, now coated in his own waste mixed with the man’s come being shoved into his mouth to be licked and sucked clean until it came again. And every single time, Ryerson would be disappointed that he didn’t have an erection too and he would be bent back over the desk so that the man could shove his fingers up his ass, rub them against his prostate, and stroke his dick. Kurt hated that his body always betrayed him and would comply with the Commandant’s sickly sweet words, “Be a good boy and come for Daddy.” And after he did, Ryerson would be excited and recharged and rape him all over again.

Kurt couldn’t stop his body from shaking nor his breathing from speeding up. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed by a pair of vice grips. It was going to be a bad panic attack and he knew it. There was nothing he could do except to ride it out along with the storm. He shuffled as far back as he could get from the under-porch’s opening and drew the Walmart blankets and the frozen one that had been left for the stray cat around himself. If the weather didn’t kill him, this would continue to be his fate. With a resigned sigh, he let the memories flood in and repeat themselves on a loop, too tired to fight them or his fate anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m a member of a Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation and while it seems like I’m hating on them hard, I’m not. It’s just my spouse has nut allergies and I’ve seen charity food bags being made containing peanut products. Every winter holiday season the news is plastered with homeless care packages making stories and while well intended, some of the food items given just aren’t safe.
> 
> Lastly, the protestors Kurt makes a reference to is written in detail in “A Nest of Scars, Chapter 5: Protesters - Kurt, age 10.” It came about during the time when the news kept showing stories about groups going to protest the U.S. child internment camps. Some had thrown stuffed animals & cards over the fences, others carried posters. They all thought they were doing good & showing support and love to these kids. All I could think about was the reaction of the inhumane guards and what further abuses they would do to the children who took them. More notes regarding this thought process is at the end of that chapter in that fic. 
> 
> I never got the feeling that the Evans were Unitarian Universalists given that in canon they go to the same church as the Fabrays. For this AU fic the Evans are because it allowed me to use more canon characters.


	10. The Good in the Bad - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt's life on the streets of Lima - Early January 2017 through April 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most times, I’ll write something inspired by the real life dystopian America and discover later that my extrapolations to make it apply to this AU were exactly that bad. This time, I actually had to make an incident worse though I put it in a different setting. TW: police brutality

—

Kurt was shocked to discover that the Lima Goodwill threw out more than half of their donations and he’d learned the trick of timing it so that he was there on the days the moms dumped the clothes their kids had grown out of. While he hadn’t gotten much the first few times he’d gone dumpster diving, the weekend after Christmas had some good finds, even if all of the clothes were designed for humans. It seemed this was the time when the moms and a ton of teenagers grumbled about idiot relatives as they thrust bag after bag of ugly, wrong-sized, and otherwise unwanted Christmas presents they couldn’t return to the store into the hands of underpaid employees. 

It was the Sunday after New Years when Kurt had his best score yet. A blonde-haired human teenager with a dopey grin and a navy blue beanie had spotted him waiting at the edge of the parking lot while he himself was waiting for his turn at the drop off door. Kurt was wary at first, but nothing about the guy’s body language and scent seemed off even if he was thrusting a white garbage bag out to him.

“Could you use these? My mom cleared out some of my brother’s stuff and added some new socks and underwear. She said in these hard and uncertain times, hybrids had to look out for each other.”

Kurt couldn’t help but give a skeptical look. Unless the guy was mostly human, there was no way he could pass that well. In return for his doubt, the guy just chuckled.

“I’m adopted. My parents and brother are hybrids. I might be the odd one out, but I’m always the loved one in. That’s what my mom always says. The name’s Chandler.”

Kurt didn’t shake the hand offered to him, but couldn’t help but reply with a smile of his own and take a chance. “Kurt.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Kurt. I wish I could stay and chat, but Between the Sheets closes in half an hour and I simply must get sheet music for the latest Idina Menzel musical. The diva waits for no one. I hope you see you around again. Bye!”

Kurt didn’t have time to utter so much as a “thank you” before the bag of clothing was put into his arms and Chandler was walking back to his car with a wave and another smile as he drove away. 

Poking around the contents of the bag, Kurt couldn’t help but let out a squeal of delight. Not only were there the promised packages of underwear and socks, but there was a worn pair of hiking boots with the treads still in good shape, a flannel shirt, a couple of long sleeved T-shirts, and a pair of charcoal gray sweatpants. Chandler hadn’t been lying about all of it designed for hybrids. There were even snaps at the back of the pants and underwear instead of an evil Velcro closure. 

After waking up and discovering that he had miraculously survived the blizzard and not frozen to death, this had been his best day of the new year.

—

After the blizzard and the freezing temperatures that refused to let up, Kurt knew he couldn’t keep passing his day and nights in old buildings, behind garages, and under porches. Even with all of his clothing on, a layer of crumbled newspaper inside his clothes, blankets, and the occasional trip to the woods in the hope there was a fire he could share, it just wasn’t enough. So he did what he’d seen others do. He started looking for doorways that were spilling heat and offered a bit of protection.

Expanding upon what some people did, Kurt sewed up the hole in the back of his largest pair of sweatpants and tucked his tail inside of them. With the layer fully over his tail, his coat, his hat and hood pulled down low, gloves, and a makeshift scarf secured around his face he could sometimes pass as human. A homeless human with an awkward gait who was angrily told to stop sleeping in the doorway of an apartment building that was leaking some amazing heat, but human, not hybrid, none-the-less. It made for traversing the streets a bit easier as well.

He discovered that the Applebee’s in the main part of Lima wasn’t too bad if you could hold out until midnight. It was near the grocery store and Breadstix, which made for quicker scavenging. The remnants of a spicy fajita had made him sick, but the amazing additional finds of two intact To Go kid meals one with macaroni and cheese and applesauce, and the other having a cheeseburger and fries made up for it. 

Best of all, they had two back doors. One for the regular staff and another for maintenance with an air vent in-between the two. As long as you never begged the staff for food or money or got too loud, something he’d seen others do, the manager didn’t mind folks hanging around the rear of the restaurant. 

Kurt had never been brave enough to sit by the employee's exit with the fully extended awning, too afraid of being noticed and recognized through the glass door and security camera he could see positioned over the cash register inside. The metallic service door reminded him too much of prison ones. It was between the two, under the building’s gutters and a bit of awning that he preferred. He could feel the warmth of the air vent and had an easy path to escape if it got to be too crowded or someone decided to make trouble.

Kurt didn’t know many names of his fellow homeless hybrids and that was fine by him as he wasn’t about to give out his own. Most used nicknames, or like himself, nothing at all. Smell, coloring, and clothing were the easier identifiers when you kept your face covered, protected from the elements, cops, and cameras. 

He avoided touching anyone if he could. Didn’t huddle together like many did. Yet between their radiating body heat and the building’s leaking of it, it was enough to stave off the chill and warm him up enough to get through the rest of the night in a place where he felt safe enough to sleep.

Information, bits of gossip, and small trades were exchanged as well, same as they were in the woods. It was how he’d found out about the Goodwill and a new Armenian restaurant whose owner would let folks sleep in the back entryway and take shelter during storms. That the Cracker Barrel and Applebee's in West Lima were best left to the humans unless you wanted a beat down or cops called on you - a lesson he’d already learned the hard way back in September. There were a couple of newbies though in the seven or so folks that night, so he didn’t mind. He wasn’t one of the ancient lifers that was trying to get some sleep. Not yet anyway.

—

January 20, 2017 marked the end of hope that things would get better for their kind. Kurt couldn’t bring himself to actually watch the Inauguration Day ceremony on the battery powered TV, but he did drink from the bottles of homemade rot gut that were passed around the small clearing in the woods. 

It wasn’t too long after that despondent day that the wooded sanctuary was raided by the cops. Though he’d only slept there a couple of times, he did frequent it as a place to go to the bathroom, refill his water bottles from the stream, and wash when he was absolutely certain no one was around to hurt him again.

It was during one such visit, when he was rooting around a pile of branches and brush trying to find the bag of supplies he’d hidden, that the sirens sounded. Police were suddenly everywhere, blaring their bullhorns, demanding that the inhabitants disperse. Pepper spray fogged the air and rubber bullets flew unseen until their targets cried out in pain, spotlights focusing on the sound and leading the cops right to them. 

Kurt didn’t know how he managed to escape in the pandemonium. His booted footfalls felt loud in his ears as he ran, thankful to already be near an edge of the woods that was less guarded. Small rubber bullets pelted his knapsack, its contents lessening their force and his scarf muffling his cries as they hit the back of his legs.

He ran and ran, not realizing where he was going until he found himself at the front of the mechanic’s driveway. When he heard a noise behind him he panicked, then turned around and waited for the inevitable. Instead of a cop eager to drag him back to the Reformatory it was the man with the screeching wife taking out the garbage. With a solitary nod he dragged the cans to the curb and went back inside the house. Relieved and heart still racing, Kurt bolted down the truck-free driveway and fumbled for the loose boards in the back of the garage. He crawled inside, for once not minding that it was cramped and still smelled of lawn chemicals and car fluids, grateful just to be alive and still free.

A number of the inhabitants of the woods hadn’t been so lucky. It was days before he dared to venture out of the garage, the cries of the children being ripped away from their parents never leaving his head. The screams from that night morphed into the voice of his mother begging the cops not to take her son and of his own six year old self crying out for his mommy. Each time he managed to doze off the nightmares returned. Waking up in a cold and panicked sweat, he would tell himself that there was nothing he could have done for the children, no way to wrestle them from the black clad arms of the angry cops. It didn’t help because not for a minute did he believe a single word of it. 

Only when he heard the scrape of garbage cans and the man tell his wife that he would get the snowblower of the garage after he’d had his cup of coffee and some breakfast, did Kurt leave his hiding spot. He didn't know how many days he’d been in there, but snow had piled on the ground in a thick layer. Unable to ignore his stomach yet too scared to scrounge in the house’s garbage cans and store dumpsters for food, he caught a couple of the garage’s mice and set out. 

Old Lady Mercedes would need her driveway shoveled and as long as he tucked his tail inside his pants and hid his face under his scarf, he had a chance of going unnoticed there. At least her back yard would be a safe place to spend some time until nightfall. The night wasn’t without its dangers, but at the moment, he couldn’t think of a better plan than to shovel some snow and return to the man and woman’s house and sleep under their front porch. It was the closest thing to safety he had.

—

For routinely shoveling the snow off her sidewalk, porch steps, and driveway, Old Lady Mercedes continued to pay him in hot chocolate, brownies, cookies, and the occasional bit of cash. The chocolate had made him sick as it always did and he couldn’t understand why such treats were her husband’s favorites if he was a hybrid. Asking would be cruel and he’d seen enough of that in the world. Stomach cramps were nothing new and nothing he couldn’t handle. 

Mercedes wouldn’t talk for long outside when it was cold, but she always had something ready by the time he was done with his work, and on the rare occasion it was something not filled with chocolate. It seemed that Roderick also enjoyed his potted ham and egg salad sandwiches on whole wheat bread. Kurt had zero complaints on those days and the plate of carefully cut triangles reminded him of the tea parties he’d have with his mom. Thankfully today was one of them and the memories and kindness warmed him. It was a welcome contrast of the past week’s constant heartbreak of remembering losing her and fear over the same thing happening to the children who’d been caught. 

A couple of times she had given him clothes, thinking he was her Roderick who had forgotten to pack something for one of his trips or simply because it was his favorite and freshly washed. The clothes were often too big, but at least they had been designed for hybrid anatomy. He hated to accept them, but they were helping to keep him warm. At least none had been in the bag of spares he’d lost during the raid. 

One time Kurt had braved asking Mercedes for a needle and thread, given that the needle he’d stolen from the high school had broken shortly after the thread had run out. Fortunately, she’d been delighted to comply. It seemed that her Roderick had loved to help with the mending, and was of the same opinion as herself that even though they had money now, didn’t mean they were above taking care of their nice things. Kurt was more than determined than ever to take extra care of the clothes she gave him. One day, he swore he’d return her husband’s things. 

—

Chandler had started working at Breadstix as a busboy and would bring him out a meal if he saw him rooting through the dumpsters. It was mostly leftovers from customers’ plates, but sometimes it was a whole dinner the person had sent back to the kitchen untouched or leftover food at the end of the evening that would have been tossed. Even the half eaten leftovers were better in a take out container than when they’d gotten mixed in with the rest of the kitchen garbage. 

On Valentine's Day the guy had given him a couple of steaks and a large slice of cheesecake and told him to come back later if he was still hungry. It seemed the day had been filled with bad blind dates and more than one established couple breaking up. Kurt had returned, but to the sound of a very pissed off woman discovering her husband had taken his mistress out to dinner instead of her and the sound of a baseball bat being taken to the windows of his car. The spectacle of revenge was amusing up until the cops arrived. He ran the second he heard the sirens, the promised extra meal not worth sticking around for. While it would have helped him get through to the weekend, the loss was better than ending up back in prison.

Kurt made sure to thank Chandler each time he came out with food, but the guy would brush him off saying it was nothing and the right thing to do. His older brother had to drop out of community college in order to financially help out their parents, and he had put off his own plans to move to New York City and become a great Broadway star for the same reasons. He understood how rough it was in these times. 

It was nice to not automatically be judged for his appearance and situation. Chandler was funny too in a quirky and charming way. Their encounters were always nice. He needed more nice in his world.

Kurt didn’t take Chandler’s generosity and kindness for granted lest it run out and he be turned upon or get the guy fired. He also didn’t want his friendly relationship with the busboy to be noticed by others. It could get both of them hurt. No matter how hungry he was, once every week or two was the limit he set for himself and that included dumpster checking. Any more wouldn’t be safe and he’d rather live on unwashed recycling can leavings than get ganged up on and lose a major food source. 

—

There was Tina, a hybrid woman in her late twenties with purple highlights in her midnight black fur who worked at the pizza place. Scared and desperate, he’d come in late one evening after having spent the last two snow-alternating-with-rain filled weeks being unable to find anything edible that wasn’t more mold than food. Nothing that didn’t make him cramp up or vomit. That same morning, Old Lady Mercedes had given him five dollars for helping her prepare the garden beds for early spring vegetables. It was hard work given that the ground was still half frozen and wet as were the heavy, soggy bags of additives needed to make the clay soil more receptive to seedlings and seeds. Personally, he thought March was too early to start planting, but it made Mercedes happy so he did it without question. The job had drained the last of his energy and walking to the 7-11 seemed like an insurmountable journey. 

Kurt held out the money in a shaking hand and asked, “What can I get for this?”

The woman frowned and sighed. “Not much, I’m afraid, but hang on a minute.” She returned with a box and stumbled as she walked, the item in her hands not quite touching the ground. With a big grin and an unapologetic shrug, she held the pizza out to him. “Oops, looks like I dropped it. Guess I’ll have to throw it out. Is pepperoni okay?” 

“Pepperoni is great.” Kurt didn’t want to get his hopes up at what he was hearing, so he tried handing her the money again. 

Gently, the woman closed his hand around the wrinkled five dollar bill. “Like I said, I dropped it. A customer shouldn’t have to pay for my mistake. Don’t you think?”

Kurt opened the box a crack and his eyes went wide. The pizza was hot and clearly recently made with extra pepperoni scattered on the top. The gift was so overwhelming that he had to force back the tears threatening to escape. “Thank you. You have no idea.”

“I think I do. I’m Tina.”

He didn’t like giving out his name, but this time he felt okay with it. “Kurt.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Kurt.” Tina added a small pile of napkins on top of the pizza box. It was what every customer was given with their order after all. “I work most Tuesday and Thursday nights and Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday afternoons. I can’t promise that I can get away with being clumsy every time, and I wouldn’t come in if you see a black Mustang in the parking lot. It belongs to the manager and he’s a total dick.”

“I know the type.” Kurt smirked before remembering what he looked liked and what his position was in this situation. They weren’t old friends about to compare horror stories about crappy bosses. Or in his case, crappy prison guards and the shitty people he’d encountered on the outside. “I won’t abuse this. I promise. It was just...it’s been a really bad couple of weeks.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. I’m glad I could help.”

“You did. You really did.” Kurt looked out the window. It was going to rain again soon and he wanted to get somewhere undercover and out of sight so he could eat his treasure while it was still hot and dry. “I should go. Thank you again.”

“I’ll see you around, Kurt. Take care, okay.”

Kurt nodded before checking to make sure his hat and hoodie covered his head and headed out the door. He didn’t make it more than a block before he ducked into a large patch of shadows and gave into temptation. The pizza was still warm and tasted even better than he’d imagined pizza would be.

—

After a disappointing and fruitless nighttime search of the bankrupt K-Mart and moved-to-a-better-location McDonald’s dumpsters, Kurt noticed a small line of hybrids and humans standing by the backdoor of the Asian grocery store and adjoining restaurant. He didn’t think much of it at first given that their dumpsters were always securely locked, but then he saw an elderly hybrid man wearing a white apron pass out filled plastic bags to each person. Curious, a bit hopeful, and having recognized a couple of people who had survived the raid on the woods, he walked to the back of the queue and waited his turn. 

It turned out to be fruitless too. The man handing out food wasn’t mean per say, but he was abrupt and bombarded him with questions.

“Do you have money?”

Kurt shook his head. He’d been asked that a number of times and it ceased to phase him now. “No.”

“Are you Asian?”

That question threw him off. “What?”

“Do you have Asian blood? Pinoy, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai? Asian.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then this is not for you. The Asian community has to stick together in these times. When you have money, then you can come back through the front door. We don’t discriminate here. Try the Mexican place. Mr. Lopez wastes too much food. His trash cans are always full.”

Kurt sighed. At least he had tried. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not a bother. I understand. These are hard times. Try Mr. Lopez. He is nicer than his wife. Tell him Mr. Chang sent you.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Kurt walked away towards the Mexican restaurant and when he was out of sight of the Asian grocery store he ducked down a couple of side streets in order to make his way back towards the Hummels’ house. Early on he’d tried the small dumpster at El Señor Lopez. The food was way too spicy and had made him sick. Same for one of the guy’s drunken customers he’d seen puking in the parking lot, so maybe it wasn’t just him.

At least the grocery store owner had been nice and the food he’d been handing out had smelled good. If he ever scraped up enough money, he’d come back. Another resource was always a good thing to have.

—

It was a weird encounter, but all were with a semi-homeless guy Kurt had nicknamed Stoner Brett. The guy reeked of bad weed and unwashed gym socks. Best of all he was harmless and below him on the pecking order. Not that Kurt had ever had to fight him. Going along with whatever the guy was saying during his high would do the trick. 

This afternoon there was a small shaft of light shining through a broken window in one of the warehouses by the 7-11. Kurt was taking advantage of the light to read an odd, but compelling hybrid romance novel he’d found.

“Woah, you’ve got a hallo. Are you Jesus? My mom said I need to tithe to Jesus on Sundays and it's really important today because it's Easter.”

Kurt looked up from his book, then at the sunbeam right above his head that Brett seemed to be focused on. “Sure, I’m Jesus.” 

“Preacher says you have to tithe ten percent. That’s ten dollars, right?”

“Yes, yes it is.” Kurt accepted the crumbled dollar bills he was given and felt around in his pocket for the brownie he hadn’t been able to exchange with April. “Here, my child. A special brownie for you blessed by God.”

“Woah, holy weed brownies. Thank you, Jesus!”

Ten dollars plus the dollar eighty-five he had found at the bottom of a knocked over employee locker - Kurt felt down right rich and knew just how he was going to spend it.

—

Despite his hunger, Kurt waited until morning to go back to the Asian grocery store. It was early enough that few cars were out on the road and the ones that were easy enough to dodge. 

Kurt wished he could take his time perusing the isles, but had enough experience to know that it was a bad idea. Instead he scanned the products and their prices as fast as he could, avoiding the sections with sauces, spices, and dishware. The bowls and cups were pretty, but he needed portable, prepackaged food that didn’t require refrigeration or cooking. Cheap was his number one priority.

He was frustrated at discovering that he could get packets of noodles cheaper here than at the 7-11 and dollar store, thinking of how many more he could have gotten had he known better. All the talk and articles about how to eat cheaper and ramen being just ten cents were a lie no matter where he went though. Still, sixty cents was better than a dollar and when he went to pay, Mr. Chang told the cashier, “For him, forty-nine cents. Special discount for the new customer.” Kurt whispered his thank you and left with his bag of food that no one else had touched or eaten part of before him. 

The best part of that excursion were the store made buns that he’d splurged on - a fried fish, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise-based sauce on a roll and a round bun filled with sugared coconut. With the exception of the pizza Tina would give him and the cheesecake from Breadstix, they were the best things he’d eaten. With careful rationing and using an empty soup can and water as a means of soaking bits of the noodles until they resembled something similar to the picture on the packages, he’d made the packets of beef and scallion flavored ramen last for eight days. Next time he had money again, he was definitely coming back.


	11. The Good in the Bad - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early May 2017 - July 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mentions of fire, injuries from a fire (not Kurt,) prostitution, mention of forced sterilization, physical assault

—

Kurt had started sleeping under the human couple’s front porch more often than not. During really bad weather he’d take shelter in their garage, getting in through the loose boards in the back that thankfully had never been noticed and repaired. The inside continued to be a cluttered mess of lawn equipment, fertilizer, insecticides, oil, and other car fluids that gave him headaches. Once when he had barely managed to escape through the back, the man had grumbled about having to finally tackle the mess and then cursed when it started to rain and he had to put back everything he’d just pulled out. The clothes he’d put there to dry hadn’t been noticed nor had the pants and shirt two weeks before, so he considered that a win and a plus side of the mess. It also housed a small and healthy colony of mice, a gross yet still necessary food source. 

The couple worked a lot and didn’t seem to notice when he’d use their garden hose for a drink of water or quick wash of himself and his clothes. They would leave out food for the stray cat sometimes which allowed him a few easy meals and amusement when they'd talk to Mr. Fluffy Pants even though the bastard was never there when they did. If they believed the cat was coming back to eat their home cooked rice, chicken, eggs, liver, and cans of tuna that was fine by him. 

Then there were the unwashed recycling cans and jars which he’d gotten better at dislodging the leftover bits from. Out of all the neighbors he dared to scrounge from, they ate food that was far more palatable than the rest of them and tossed out a lot of useful things. He’d acquired a better toothbrush and more toothpaste thanks to them. 

Some of their neighbors were assholes and there was a pair of yap dogs he absolutely loathed and wished he could barbecue along with their racist flags. He liked to use their lawns as a bathroom feeling it was only right since they’d shit on his rights. The rowdy neighbors across the street seemed to be too focused on their own dramas to notice him, and the father who had back in January didn’t mind. Unlike the hybrid neighborhoods which the cops were targeting a lot more than before, the police made only the occasional pass down this one. Overall it was a safe place to stay at a few days a week. 

Their son and his friends were dicks and had thrown an apple at him when they’d caught him walking through the back yard. He knew how to deal with people like that though and so had just glared at them, picked up the apple, and moved on. And if he later marked the guy’s bicycle and a football that was also in the garage, that was just payback. 

The couple never bothered him though and he remained determined to never correct their belief that it wasn’t just a stray cat hanging around their yard. He didn’t think they were racists, but their next door neighbor was. The knowledge of what would happen should he be arrested and sent back to the Reformatory was always in the back of his mind. So he was careful. So very, very careful, sleeping under the porch only when they’d gone to bed and leaving before they headed out to work. 

Kurt couldn’t believe how long it had taken him to figure out what their names were. Just because “Hummel Tires & Lube” was painted on the side of the man’s truck didn’t necessarily mean he was The Hummel. Then one time their kid must have majorly fucked something up because the woman came outside and screamed, “Finn Hudson-Hummel, get your butt inside and clean up your mess!” It was the only time he’d ever heard her yell. As for the couple’s first names, he was pretty sure the man was Burt and the woman was Carole. Mostly, they called each other “Honey,” “Sweetie,” and “Dear.” It was nice.

—

It was in early May that another blow came to the hybrid community. A mob of humans carrying torches and wearing clothing and symbols of the conservative party set fire to Dalton Academy. Reports of the incident said there were cheers as the buildings burned down and students fled the fire, screaming as the flames burned their fur and skin. Dalton Academy had been a refuge for hybrid young men whose families were wealthy enough to send them there. Once resented by those of the lower classes who could only dream of attending, the loss was mourned. If even the rich and powerful among them were no longer safe, what hope did the rest of them have? 

Kurt opened up the quart of expired, now fermented, apple cider he’d found the week before and got drunk in one of the collapsing warehouses near the 7-11. He also tried for a second time to lighten up his fur with a box of hair dye in a desperate attempt to disguise himself from the cops and other local racists. The cider worked. The dye didn’t. The world sucked.

—

Kurt didn’t realize his birthday had passed a few days prior until April Rhodes bragged about clearing out of a house before the ink on the May 27th paperwork had dried and right as the moving truck was pulling up. When she saw his surprise at her mention of the date, she’d insisted that they celebrate his sixteenth birthday in style. She stole them some nice clothes from the dry cleaners, and after getting dressed up, they had snuck into a movie theatre and watched hours of old black and white classics. April had brought along a bottle of cheap wine that was somehow both overly sweet and smelled like old people. It was the best birthday he’d ever had. Or that he could remember at least.

—

Kurt wished he could say that he never needed to trade with the closeted clerk at the 7-11 again, but he couldn’t. He just accepted it as a part of his life, same as he had at the Reformatory no matter how much he hated it. At least here the clerk continued to only want to give him blowjobs. While it may not have been as bad as the many acts he’d been forced to do by guards and the Commandant, he knew he’d end up having bad flashbacks. 

Same as then, there really weren’t many other options. Not after the warnings he’d gotten about the new family life health clinic in town that was mutilating hybrids with forced sterilizations in terrifying, brutal ways. He needed pain killers not to have his dick and balls cut off. Fucking humans.

If it hadn’t been for a couple of the Neanderthals he’d bunked with in juvie finishing their sentences or escaping and taking over the human gang, he wouldn’t have had a need for pain meds at all. He had learned the hard way that the high school’s dumpsters were completely off limits now, and he was never going to eat another tater tot again. 

With his battered shoulder, elbow, and the rest of his left arm in a makeshift sling, the nasty cut on his abdomen wrapped with the washed pair of used pantyhose, and the cuts he could feel on his jaw stinging like hell, Kurt grabbed a bottle of Advil, a tube of antibiotic ointment, and a box of condoms and headed for the back room of the store. Wanting to get the transaction over with as quickly as possible, he had his dick exposed, stroked to hardness, and sheathed in dark brown latex before the clerk could follow and drop to his knees. Kurt was glad that appearing “ready and waiting” turned the guy on. It didn’t take long before the clerk was coming. 

He knew the deal though. One sex act for each item. He dry swallowed some Advil and put on a fresh condom waiting for the guy to recharge. Luckily, it didn’t take long and soon the guy had his mouth around his dick again. Kurt fought through the pain the movement caused and tried to think of hot actors he wouldn’t mind being blown by. There was one black haired human who did a lot of commercials and had bit parts in movies and cop dramas. The dancing in the Free Credit Rating Dot Com commercials wasn’t even close to sexy, but the man was attractive enough to keep him hard and help him to pretend the blowjob was something he wanted. With the images in his head and the suction on his dick he was able to come. As always, it turned the clerk on more and soon the trade was over.

As like the too-many-times before, Kurt tossed the condom, tucked his flaccid dick back into his pants, thanked the clerk for a great time, and tried to push it all out of his mind. He didn’t know what it was about hybrid cock that turned humans on so much. Or maybe it was just his they loved. His dream was that one day no one was going to see or touch his dick without his permission and he’d get to have sex that was fully consensual. That he’d actually find an out, gay, and preferably hybrid guy in Lima that didn’t make his skin crawl. Right now that was a far off fantasy and all he wanted to do was curl up somewhere and wait until his body healed enough to stop hurting so much. 

The only good thing to come out of the whole ordeal was that the comed-out clerk hadn’t noticed him nick a couple of tubes of glucose tablets on his way out of the store. They were the only thing he’d ever managed to steal from there and would get him through until he was well enough to look for food again. A hybrid he sometimes shared a warm doorway with had taught him that trick.

—

Chandler wasn’t working at Breadstix, but a human waitress by the name of Rochelle was. Although he loathed what he was likely about to do, he was glad he’d washed up beforehand. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d had to make out with Rochelle, but he didn’t do it often either. He just hated that he would have to trade his body for goods and services so soon again. She wasn’t a bad kisser and always gave him a freshly cooked meal or a salad with chicken in it and a bag of breadsticks. Sometimes though she wanted to be felt up and grabbed his ass in return if she was really enjoying herself. Those times were the worst and always ended up giving him flashbacks and nightmares. He didn’t go back for over a month after the first time she’d gone that far.

This time, all she wanted was some light making out and a hickey on her neck to make her boyfriend jealous. The hickey part was a new one and Kurt hoped he didn’t contract anything from the process. Gods knew he wasn’t her only service provider. When the deeds were done, Rochelle went back inside and returned with a small bag of food. Apparently, he’d done a good enough job to earn him some fried fish and french fries.

The transaction over with, Kurt took his prostituted meal and left to find somewhere safe to eat it. 

—

Packing only what he could fit into his knapsack and pockets and wearing as many layers as he could stand in the June heat, Kurt once again tried to make it out of racist, homophobic Lima. The same as back when he first escaped, then after the raid on the woods, and again after Dalton was burned down, it was fruitless. The construction hadn't progressed by more than a few feet and the various bulldozers and whatever the other things were called had only expanded in number and covered more of the highway’s banks. The slow as tar shit workers had replaced the American flag that hung down from the Route 75 overpass like a modern Nazi banner, yet never fixed the damn overpass and road below itself. 

He tried yet another route, this one to the southwest that he hoped would allow him to eventually circle back and head east again. That too had been a waste of time, energy, and nerves. 

Sitting inside a rusted jungle gym in an empty playground, he made notations on his map. It was always something that stopped him. A too rough neighborhood. A too wealthy neighborhood. Gang markings. Nationalists holding some kind of clan gathering, picnic rally. Cop cars full of armed humans. Police precincts. Sheriff precincts and cars. Realizing he’d strayed too close to the roads he, Quinn, and Puck had taken when they’d escaped from the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory and seeing a Reformatory bus at a stop light in the distance - that try had sent him into a panic attack and he’d crossed off the entire area. 

Today it was just an instinct that he needed to turn around and turn around now. He couldn’t explain the fear, but he heeded it. Kurt cursed and repeated what he had a million times before. He was never going to get out of this fucking damn town. Not alive and free anyway. 

—

It wasn’t Old Lady Mercedes’ fault. It wasn’t. She was old and senile and trapped in the past more days than not. He should have known better than to try to wash the majority of his things in her back yard, but the laundry line, clothes pins. and warm July day had been too tempting. It was also his fault for not sticking around, choosing instead to pursue a couple of the neighborhood’s trash cans that had proven themselves useful before. When he got back all of the clothing was gone including his winter coat and the underwear and socks Chandler had given him. 

At least she loved trashy magazines and routinely threw them out when she was done reading them. Finished with an alleged eyewitness account about the Crown Princess of England having a torrid ménage à trois with the queens of Iceland and Norway, Kurt flipped to a different article, this one promising all the behind the scenes gossip and spoilers of the new season of _The Real Housewives of Long Island_.

Kurt shifted, wincing at movement. All the gossip rags in the world couldn’t distract him from the chaffed state of his poor dick, nads, and ass. Why did Mercedes have to steal his underwear too? Why had he even bothered to take the ones he'd been wearing off and add them to the wash? They were his only remaining pair and in shitty shape, more holes than fabric, but at least they’d protected him from zippers, seams, and Velcro. 

A week later, choosing to spend the morning sitting on the ledge of an underpass's support wall had clearly been yet another mistake. The recent rain had mixed with the local pollutants and formed dirty, rainbow-swirled puddles. A large portion of one was seeping into his cargo pants and serving only to add to his misery.

The underpass was a recent discovery, found when he was trying to find a new place to sleep. It wasn’t tagged, covered in trash, nor recently marked by a hybrid as their territory. The ledge wasn’t wide, but he could sit and lay down on it. Kurt found out why no one lived there when he’d tried to spend the night and nearly gotten killed when he turned over in his sleep and rolled down the steep incline onto the, thankfully empty, road. 

As a place to hang out and read in relative safety it was perfectly passable. Only at set times did cars and trucks pass under, and as the construction of the walls formed a kind of amplification chamber, he was alerted well before they arrived, giving him enough time to get out of sight. 

On this particular early morning, the sun hadn’t quite yet risen and there was still enough light from the street lamps to illuminate the pages of his chosen reading material. He knew from experience he had until the warehouse’s faulty evacuation alarm went off. After that the workers and tractor trailers would start coming down the road and then it would be time to go. For now, he could read in peace about the catfights between rich trophy wives and their endless need to stir things up with each other and the press.


	12. Anniversary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a year since Kurt’s escape from the Reformatory and he reflects upon it. The usual trigger warnings apply.

—

Before he knew it, a year had passed since he’d escaped from the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory. Kurt couldn’t believe he’d managed to survive the entire time on the streets let alone the whole winter. He was thinner than he had been when he’d escaped and had more emotional and physical scars, but he was alive and free. 

The starvation was bad. The beatings were bad. The fear of humans and being reported and arrested by them was bad. The flashbacks and nightmares were bad. But all of it was nothing compared to the hell he’d spent eight years of his life in. He’d take the streets of Lima, Ohio over the Lima Heights Hybrid Reformatory any day. Out here, he was free. Confined to small areas of a town that were safer than others, but he still had his freedom. He had more choices. 

Handcuffs and shackles no longer tethered his wrists, ankles, and tail. Even the fur had grown back where the metal had last rubbed it off. No guard chained him to a desk to work at a sewing machine or tethered him to others in a field of crops that needed picking. 

No one had forced him to strip for a cavity search that lingered way too long, had demanded a performance from him while he showered, or dragged him to the Commandant’s office to be touched without consent in the most brutal of ways. The sex he had now was grudgingly consensual. An act of pure desperation and never on a daily or even weekly basis. It was receiving a few blowjobs at the 7-11 for medicine or getting his ass groped and fondling a pair of human breasts for a meal when he could barely stand for a lack of food he’d gone without for far too long. It was a choice he got to make, not one that was forced upon him by guards and a prison commandant with all of the power. 

He could read what he wanted to, and half of the time, when he wanted to. Most of the human librarians didn’t mind when he came in and had stopped checking up on him every five minutes once they realized that all he wanted to do was read and on occasion wash up in the bathroom. Books, magazines, and newspapers were always being tossed by people and the Goodwill. Any he didn’t want to read again served other useful purposes. 

Singing was no longer something he avoided. At the Reformatory it was a thing that had become associated with Commandant Ryerson and the creepy, abusive guard, Officer Schuester. Old Lady Mercedes had transformed it into something he now welcomed. He could finally sing show tunes and random bits of songs he’d picked up quietly to himself without fear and without flashbacks. 

He loved singing the most with Mercedes. When they sang together, it reminded him of singing with his mom and her singing him to sleep. For Mercedes, most of the time she believed she was singing with her beloved Roderick again, and that was okay. It was good that she’d had a husband who clearly treasured her as much as she still did him. 

Though Kurt didn’t believe in the god and Jesus that Mercedes did, he came to realize that the days when she wanted to sing nothing but hymns had been points in her life that had settled deep where the dementia couldn’t quite follow and hold a permanent grip. She sang on Roderick’s birthday. On Easter where together they had celebrated with family every single year no matter where they lived in the world at the time. The days when her hymns were full of sorrow her heart knew that something was wrong and off in her world. That her soul had lost a part of itself. Kurt stayed with her for as long as she needed him on those days. His suffering at his own great loss would never fade, never be forgotten. The companionship was mutually appreciated.

Singing with Old Lady Mercedes made him feel safe and appreciated. When he was with her, he felt like he mattered.

While he may not have had a choice but to wake up at the crack of dawn because the owners of the house he preferred to sleep at often left early for work, it was his choice as to where to sleep. He had learned the places that were safer than others. Once the Hummels were gone, he could either return and sleep as long as he wanted under their porch or in their garage or find another spot such as under the rusted shell of an old truck in a patch of weeds.

The woods weren’t a safe place for sleeping, but he could still use it as a place to fill up his water bottles, go to the bathroom, and catch up on gossip and news. People there were more cautious than ever with the bigots and racist cops continuing to target the woods, but those who worked as prostitutes, drug dealers, and janitorial staff were great at sussing out information. The last raid had been a complete flop thanks to a detective liking his booze, cocaine, and threesomes a little too much. At least that’s what April had told him. Her return of the favored boa continued to pay off.

Kurt had learned by direct experience and the tales of other homeless people, namely the hybrid ones, which dumpsters and abandoned lots and shelters were safe. After the election, and even more-so after Inauguration Day, there wasn’t a single shelter that was safe for hybrids. At least none that he had a chance of getting to or that weren’t connected to a church. 

The only exception he had considered was a sheik temple near Findlay that was offering meals, showers, laundry services, and a place to sleep, but he had no way of getting there. A fair number of people had gone after the woods had been raided in January. Even if he wasn’t terrified of the truck stop and bus station, thanks in no small part to the Reformatory’s busses, Kurt figured the temple was filled up by now. And he’d bet his remaining pair of ill-fitting shoes that it was being harassed by the president’s red hat wearing supporters that loved driving around in their flag covered pickup trucks threatening anyone they didn’t feel was on their side or who simply existed in a hybrid body. It was nice to know though that a safe place was there for those who needed it; those who hadn’t been arrested in the raid or had become homeless afterwards.

The Lima Steak ‘N Stuff, which he had only scavenged around a couple of times given its nearness to the racist Applebee’s, had become segregated. They didn’t mind taking hybrid money, but hybrids were only allowed to eat in the back, partitioned off side of the restaurant, were charged more for smaller portions, and not allowed to enter at all on Sundays. That day was when the good human Christians came for lunch after praising their god for not being born a hybrid or queer. As for the dumpsters, when the owner was in a particularly riled up mood, he’d pour bleach into the garbage bags or lace them with rat poison. 

The jackass owner’s sister ran the Dairy Queen down the street from it and was just as bad. All Kurt had been doing was walking by and she’d run after him calling him slurs and saying she was going to call the cops. A litany of slurs he’d learned in juvie were clamped down as he ran for his life. If it hadn’t been for the cameras and fear, he would have come back and keyed her car. Maybe peed in its locks and on the windshield, letting his marking piss seep into the air vents and make her smell like the dog fucker she swore he was. 

Other restaurant and grocery store managers did similar things. Kroger's locked up their dumpsters, had installed a motion detector camera and lights, and there was just something about the place that had shaken him to the core the minute he’d laid eyes on it. 

The Meijer's was okay to search through and eventually he learned the routine of the gangs. Not that they were always predictable, but it was close enough that if he was cautious and avoided bakery goods tossing day, he could dig through it. 

There was a Dollar Store on Second Street that allowed hybrids and homeless people to shop at if you didn’t mind being followed around to make sure you didn’t steal anything. They kept their dumpsters under surveillance and would chase you off if you tried to search them. The one time he’d tried, it took only one look over the edge to see there was nothing even close to usable or edible. Also, their garbage bags for sale were complete pieces of crap. They didn’t keep the rain off and would tear just taking them out of the box. A complete waste of a hard earned dollar and six cents. 

On North Street where it changed from West to East was a fancy restaurant that would hand out meals to those in need when the owners wanted to show the news stations just how charitable they were. It was way too close to the Allen County Sheriff’s Office so he and every hybrid he knew avoided it like the plague. The rumor that the cops gave the place a kickback when it was time to fill their monthly arrest quotas was a plausible one.

The 7-11 was best visited at night, but not on Fridays because that was when the human and hybrid prostitutes serviced the local businessmen and women. The drug dealer, like the prostitutes, would leave him alone as long as he never ventured onto their territory on that day and all major holidays. Holidays were the busiest times as they were when their customers escaped irritating family members to get their thrust and high on using the flimsy excuse they had forgotten to buy a necessary item for the gathering. 

—

Kurt celebrated his escape anniversary and all the ways he’d learned how to survive in an unfamiliar world by going to the bowling alley. It was a long walk, but April had shacked up with the manager and would make him some fries in trade for doing the work she didn’t want, or was too drunk, to do. This time, in exchange for cleaning out the grease traps, she threw in some chicken fingers and wings. If he was careful with rationing, they’d last him until Monday. It was a great day. 

The night was spent under the Hummels’ front porch. He’d heard the woman saying something about driving their kid to college and spending the weekend in Columbus. For two mornings he could sleep in and take a garden hose bath and wash his clothes without fear they’d pull into the driveway. Could even use their brick patio as a means to scratch his back and get the ground in dirt out of his fur and off his body. It wasn’t dignified in the least, rolling around stark naked, but it worked and didn’t give him splinters in intimate and unreachable places like sticks and tree trunks did. Their damn stray cat had used the blanket under the porch and given him fleas. Without a means to acquire medicated shampoo, he didn’t have much of a choice. 

Kurt didn’t mind that the garbage and recycling had already been picked up. He had fries, chicken, and half a water bottle full of April’s too-sweet wine. Life was hard, but he was free and he would be celebrating the victory in luxury.


	13. Daydreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short epilogue that I felt would be best as its own chapter. Thanks to all who came along for the journey.

—

August soon blended into September and October was about to begin. Kurt continued to live. Continued to survive. He had a routine now. Leave the Hummels’ under-porch or garage before they left for work. Finish sleeping under the remains of the 1950 Chevy propped up on cinder blocks and hidden by tall grasses that were in an overgrown lot two blocks over if he was still tired. Check on Old Lady Mercedes and do work for her. Pocket the chocolate chip cookies or brownies she made for him. If he couldn’t trade them with April or someone else for better food, he would save them for himself. Check the Hummels' trash and recycling bins, then the dumpsters at the grocery store, restaurants, and 7-11. If he needed toiletries and it had been long enough not to piss off the maid if they caught him stealing from their cart, he went to the motel. When he was truly desperate for pain killers or cold meds, he dragged himself to the 7-11 in the middle of the night, pulled out his dick, and fantasized about anyone but the greasy clerk blowing him. 

Kurt longed for a normal life. A quiet life. One where he didn’t have to be so jaded, so distrustful of the world, so on guard all the time. He was tired of being angry about how much his life sucked because if he was honest with himself, it sucked a lot less since he’d escaped and it was improving all the time. He still got into fights, got beat up, was hungry more often than not, was scared, still had to bathe where people might see him, and had to trade sexual favors for needed goods, though it was far less often these days. All in all, it was a far better existence than the one he’d been forced into at the Reformatory. 

There were humans in his new life that, while he didn’t actually trust because you couldn’t trust anyone, were at least kind to him. Old Lady Mercedes was the kindest, most generous person he knew. April Rhodes rarely did anything without asking for something in trade, but those trades were fair and out of necessity for her own survival. He never would have survived in Lima without her help those first few months. Chandler gave him food when he’d see him at the Breadstix dumpster and almost always chatted with him for a while, telling him bad jokes and treating him as an equal. 

He hadn’t seen Tina ever since the manager of the pizza place had put up a No Furs sign. Not seeing her in the woods or other homeless hangouts was a good thing. She’d saved him from starvation more than once and had never treated him as less than for being homeless and in need. 

Even if the Hummels didn’t know they had more than a stray cat or two coming around, he still felt safer in their yard than any other place he’d taken shelter in. Sleeping on landscaping marble under the front porch or in a cluttered garage that gave him a headache and the occasional mouse to eat was better than curling up in a corner of an abandoned warehouse.

No matter how much his life had improved since his incarceration at six years old, he couldn’t help but daydream about having a real home again. The kind he could barely remember he had had with his mom. The kind he read about in books and saw on TV and in movies. He wasn’t dreaming of perfect. He just wanted a place he could call home and a parent to love him. The kind of parent like his mom had been. Like the Hummels seemed to be when he could hear them inside the house or outside playing with a football in the yard if he hadn’t been able to leave the garage in time. All of it was a dream he’d never get, but one he couldn’t help but want. 

Being close to it would have to do. Kurt snuggled further into his blankets under the Hummels’ front porch, smiling at the man’s snarky jokes about the commercials on TV. Maybe his dreams would be good tonight and the nightmares wouldn’t return. And if they did? Then at least he could fall asleep to sounds of what a better life could be. For now, he was okay with that.


End file.
